After seeing glitter jars all over Pinterest for the past few weeks, I decided to make one of our own. (Most of the jars are called "time-out jars" or "calm down jars") I knew I didn't want ours to be a time-out jar because I didn't want any punitive connotations, so when O requested blue food coloring and blue glitter, I decided that we'd call it our "Starry Night Jar" (since we love Van Gogh's Starry Night painting).
To make the jar, we filled it with warm water. We added blue glitter and blue glitter glue. The glue creates a swirling effect when you shake the jar, and I added a little extra clear glue (school glue, but it's clear,not white) to make it swirl a little longer. I didn't measure anything...just eyeballed it.
Once when E(2) was extremely tired and fussy, I sat with her on the kitchen floor and grabbed the jar and shook it. We both stared at it and talked about how the glitter (stars) was slowly drifting to the bottom. I was happily amazed when she immediately calmed down and stared at the jar for a minute or so. I'm planning to put together a peace basket, and this will be an important component of it.
12 comments:
There's a great kids book called Moody Cow Meditates which is about learning to deal with anger and emotions using one of these jars. We love it, and made jars for everyone in the family. HIghly recommend the book!
I love the idea of a calming jar rather than time out, I will suggest this to my mom for my nephew, I think it will suit him well.
we have one and we call it our fairy jar :)
we love starry night also :)
what is a peace basket? I would love to hear about yours. My mom has alzheimers and I am going to make her one of these..she will absolutely love it.
I have never considered time out as a punitive thing. Time out is where we step aside, calm ourselves, take deep breaths, recover our calm and suit up again to go back out and meet the world.
What a cool and beautiful idea! Starry Night is my absolute favorite work of art!
How old is your little one? I love this idea and think my girls would adore it but they are only 2.5 yrs old and I fear they'd be as interested in getting the lid off as they would be of watching the glitter swirl around. Seeing one of them has mastered the child proof lid on the nail polish remover I don't much fancy risking glitter and food colouring everywhere. Any suggestions on childproofing the jar!
I would love to know what you put in the peace basket
The jar could be hot glued closed so there would be no risk of little ones opening the lid. :)
Caulk the lid on, and use a plastic jar. I super glued the lid on a peanut butter jar to make ours and my boys got it open. That made it the exact opposite of a Calm Down Jar! :)
All my glitter clumped at the top of the jar. Any suggestions?
Rita- Maybe your water wasn't warm enough for the glue in the glitter glue to dissolve, so maybe add some almost hot water and shake it up.
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