“I Spy” Books and Craft/Activity
“I spy” books have been around forever. Thousands of children have spent hours pouring over them looking for elusive objects or individuals. (Ahem, Waldo, I’m talking to you!) I myself adored them as a child. Especially the Waldo books. So it is extra fun for me to see all the modern “I spy” books that have been coming out and I’m so excited that my oldest child is just old enough to start doing some. Below are two new release “I spy” books and a craft/activity inspired by them to help keep your littles busy finding and enjoying.
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This board book is packed with a lot of “ABC” themed “I spy” fun! Each page contains a letter and each letter is packed with objects and animals that start with that letter for children to find. There is a list at the back if they need more direction in their searching. My favorite characteristics of this book are the bright colors and gorgeous details.
“Undercover: One of These Things is Almost Like the Others” by Bastien Contraire
This book is fabulously unique. As the reader your mission is to search through each page spread to find the one item that doesn’t fit in with the others. The illustrations are vivid neon colors and Bastien did a wonderful job of finding objects and animals that camouflage really well at first glance. It gives me a little bit of a thrill when I find each object that doesn’t fit, because it usually is something quite ridiculous and I love how it fit in at first glance.
I Spy Bottles
All these beautiful “I spy” books had me motivated to finally try making my own “I spy” bottle. I have been eying these for a while on Pintrest and Instagram and finally decided to give it a go. I’m really proud of my personal touch/idea to wrap the photo of the items around the lid so that the bottle is all one joined piece without the item list tied to the top or pasted over the clear section blocking the view. Below is my simple tutorial of how I did that. Enjoy!
Supplies:
- white rice
- food coloring in desired colors
- 1 bottle (Voss bottles are AWESOME for these! That is what I used here.)
- photo of your objects
- an array of small objects of your choice (I did 18 for mine.)
- scissors
- clear packing tape
- hot glue gun
Steps:
- First, if desired, you need to color your rice. To do this, you simply place a cup or two in a plastic ziplock bag, squeeze a few drops of food coloring in, close the bag, then shake the bag until it is all covered and colored. There is no exact science to this and no way to really mess it up. Trust me, so easy! I did three zip log bags of rice with three different colors (yellow, red and blue). In the end I had some extra rice, but I just saved it away for another craft project some day in the future.
- After the rice is colored, spread it out on a baking sheet to dry. You want to make sure all the moisture is gone before you seal it in a bottle. I let mine sit overnight, but I seriously doubt it needed that long to dry. I just wanted to finish in the morning anyway. 🙂
- Gather up your small objects of choice and line them up on the edge of a pice of computer paper or white card stock and take a photo. Then measure out the lid on your bottle to make sure that when you print out your photo it will fit around your lid. The lid of my Voss Bottle was 7 inches which was perfect and made it easy for me to just print of a 5×7 photo. (Below is what the photo I sent into Walmart for printing looked like after cropping it.) After it was printed I just cut it into a strip, wrapped it around the lid of my bottle, and taped it all the way around with clear packing tape.
- Now you are ready to fill your bottle! Put your items in and fill the rest of your bottle with your colored rice, leaving enough space at the top that your items can move around in the rice. You may also want to hot glue your lid to your bottle so kiddos can’t open it up and dump out the contents. Just do a few strips of hot glue around the rim then twist your lid on tight and let it dry.
If you don’t feel confident with cropping, photoshop, or simply want to do another method you could simply take a photo of your objects grouped together, punch a hole in the corner, and tie it around your finished bottle with a string. Also easy peasy. 
These are so much fun to make and even more fun to play with! Ours is tucked away in our special need-to-sit-and-wait-for-a-long-time diaper bag. We take it with when we have meetings, long appointments, or church. Such a life-saver! 🙂
If you give this Beyond the Book activity a try I’d love to hear how it goes! Share it on Instagram using hashtag #beyondthebook (I’m on Instagram as @book.nerd.mommy) or even just comment here with your thoughts. It would make my day! Or to simply save for later pin the image below.
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