Silicone Nesting Bowls

Simple, soft and endlessly useful, this set of three silicone nesting bowls belongs in every sensory play basket. The bowls come in three sizes, and one has a sieve base. Children can scoop, pour, mix, tip, sift and stack with them, then nest them neatly back together at the end of play.

They work just as well with dry materials like rice, lentils, chickpeas or sand as they do with water. Use them in the bath, the sandpit, a sensory bin or at the kitchen table. Fill them with taste-safe ingredients for little ones still exploring with their mouths, or use them for sorting, colour mixing, mould-making and pretend cooking as your child grows. There is no single right way to play. They are simply good tools that invite your child to explore.

Made from soft, flexible food-grade silicone, the bowls are gentle in little hands, safe to mouth, and easy to clean. Because they stay useful from babyhood through the preschool years, they are a set your family will come back to again and again.

What’s Included

• 1 x large silicone bowl (approx. 11.2 cm wide x 6.2 cm deep)
• 1 x medium silicone bowl
• 1 x small silicone bowl
• One of the three bowls has a sieve base

Total: 3 pieces
Recommended age: 6 months+
Set weight: approx. 240 g. Food-grade, BPA-, PVC- and phthalate-free silicone. Dishwasher safe and can be steam-sterilised. Some materials (such as food colouring or turmeric) may stain silicone, so wash soon after use.

What the OT Says

Scooping and pouring might look simple, but they are some of the richest activities I see in early childhood. When a child holds a bowl in one hand and pours from another, both hands are working together, each with a different job. That is bilateral coordination, and it underpins later skills like cutting with scissors, stabilising paper while drawing, and doing up buttons. Pouring also asks the wrist and forearm to rotate in a controlled way, and the child has to judge how fast to tip. That builds motor planning and grading of movement, which is how children learn to control force rather than “all or nothing.”

The sieve bowl adds something special. Children see and feel cause and effect as sand or water flows through the holes, and they start predicting what will pass through and what will stay behind. That supports early problem-solving and STEAM thinking. The three sizes also give children a natural introduction to size and order: big, medium, small, full and empty, more and less. Figuring out how the bowls nest back together takes trial and error, visual perception and a bit of persistence, which are all early building blocks of executive function.

From a sensory point of view, these bowls invite rich tactile exploration through whatever you put in them: the cool flow of water, the weight of chickpeas, the grainy feel of sand. For children who are cautious about messy textures, a bowl can act as a gentle middle step, letting them explore with a tool before touching with their hands. Because the silicone is soft and safe to mouth, babies can also explore the bowls themselves through oral exploration, which is an important way young children learn about the world.

As an occupational therapist, I love open-ended tools like these because they let play stay play while children naturally work on a whole range of skills. They are also wonderful for language: pour, fill, empty, in, out, more, all gone. I’d recommend this set for home, for classrooms, and for therapy sessions alike.