Mommy's Time Out Magazine July 2017 | Page 10

Let's Get Crafty!

Show your patriotic spirit with a DIY red white and blue stars sensory bottle. A super fun calm down jar for the 4th of July!   Calm down sensory bottles are most often used as a calm down tool for children, they are just as effective for adults (or stressed out and tired moms). 

DIY Red White and Blue Stars Sensory Bottle Materials:  

Recycled water bottle (We like Voss bottles)

Goo Gone

Red, white and blue star-shaped pony beads

Water

Glue

1. Peel off the label on the water bottle. Use Goo Gone to

remove any remaining residue.

2. Drop red, white and blue star-shaped pony beads into the

empty bottle. You can also use regular red, white, and blue

pony beads. We used 50, one for each state.

3. Fill the bottle all the way to the top with water.

4. Screw on the lid and play with it for a day or two to make

sure you are happy with it. It’s hard to add more stars later.

5. Glue the lid on once you are sure you don’t want to make

any more changes to your red, white and blue stars sensory bottle.

Making calm down sensory bottles with children can be used as a teaching aid. Putting together this patriotic sensory bottle created 3 main learning opportunities for us:

Science:  Making a sensory bottle with star-shaped pony beads and water is a great opportunity to learn about scientific concepts such as weight and density. 

Patriotic/History:  We included a total of 50 stars in this bottle to represent each state. This provided an opportunity to learn about our country and its history.

Math:  In order to use 50 stars, they must be counted. This is your opportunity to add in some math concepts. If your child can easily count, you could add in some skip counting. We ended up making piles of 5 stars each. This lead us to wonder if we could have an even amount of red white and blue stars which brought up the concept of division and… you get the idea. We ended up using 17 red, 17 blue, and 16 white stars because my kids wanted them as even as possible.

By Jen Kovatch