Settle Down Sparkles

After seeing the "Calm Down Jars" all over Pinterest, I couldn't help giving it a try.  I love the idea of having something that can gauge the time during a meltdown or when they need a break because with my little ones "5 minutes" means nothing to them.  It might as well be ten days in the dungeon.  And NO we don't have a dungeon, however there are those days I might be tempted to use one if I had it!  That being said, I liked this idea but had to make a few changes to fit our family.

Instead of jars that could break, I used two plastic iced tea containers that were about to be thrown in the trash.  I just rinsed them out and pealed off the label. Next, fill the bottles about 3/4 full with water to leave room for mixing.

Next, I dumped in one small bottle of glitter glue in each container along with one small container of matching glitter (I used blue and magenta, one for each kiddo) and a healthy squirt of clear school glue.

Finally, put on the cap and give it a good shake to test it out.  If your glitter is falling too fast, which mind did probably because I used cheap glitter and glitter glue from the dollar bin, if this happens no worries just add more clear glue or I found that clear Karo syrup works well too to slow down the glitter!

I also added a little silver glitter in each to contrast with the colored sparkles and I really like how it turned out.  Once you get the perfect consistency and the bottle is full (you may need to add a little more water to top it off), then I used a little E-6000 glue along the rim of the lid to permanently seal the lid.  So far they have been dropped and banged around quite a bit and there have been no spills or glitter disasters.

In our house we call them "Settle Down Sparkles" and the kids seem to really like them.  This picture shows you a bottle that has "settled" and one that has just been shaken.  I added extra glue and syrup, one squirt at a time until I got to about a 5 minute settling time.  Because of the colored glue and sparkles I didn't need to add any food coloring, but you can add and experiment with the colors as much as you want, I let the kids pick the colors to get them involved.

These are much prettier than the sight of me giving the kids the "evil eye" :)

Enjoy,