Hellobee

At almost five, one might think that Lil’ CB might be past the need for timeouts. But one would be foolishly mistaken in that case. As Lil’ CB has grown older, his outbursts and tantrums have certainly grown fewer and farther between, but we still do see them and we still combat them with some time away to breathe, think, and calm down.

We adhere by the “one minute per year of child’s age” rule when it comes to the length of the timeout. This means that, currently, Lil’ CB’s timeouts last for almost 5 minutes. While I fully believe that is an appropriate length of time for him to sit, decompress and calm down, I also felt like he was having a hard time gauging how long he would be sitting there, which sometimes makes it harder for him to settle down.

I had seen these calm down bottles or jars all over Pinterest and decided to give one a try, especially once I read that you could adjust the “ingredients” so that it acts almost as a timer. Calm down bottles are essentially a type of sensory bottle (see more from Mrs. Deer here), made with glitter, water and glue. The water becomes thickened with the glue and glitter and when shaken up, the glitter slowly settles down to the bottom, much like a snow globe. The more glue you add, the longer it takes the glitter to settle. Not only does it act like a timer, but with the swirling glitter to watch, it becomes a sensory tool and a way to help young children self-regulate (more about that here).

They are very easy to make, and require only a few items: an empty plastic bottle; a bottle of glitter glue; fine, loose glitter (it will help if the loose glitter and glitter glue are the same colors); and clear tacky glue. In fact, they were so easy to make, that a set of little hands did most of the work here. An added bonus was that with his investment in making them, Lil’ CB was more interested in them!

We used Smart Water bottles since they were smooth and easy to hold. After peeling off the label and scrubbing off the sticky bits with the help of some Goo Gone, we filled them with warmish water. If the water is too hot, it will cause the plastic to get all wonky, but warm water will help break up the glitter glue.

Then, squeeze in an entire bottle of glitter glue (we used a 3 oz bottle):

We (okay, I) joked that the glitter glue chunks looked like unicorn poop…

Next, carefully shake in a tube of glitter:

Finally, squeeze in some clear tacky glue.

We started by using half the bottle of glue and then capping the water bottle and shaking it to see how long it was taking the glitter to settle. Since I wanted the glitter to fully settle after about 5 minutes, we continued to play around with it and ended up using almost the entire bottle of clear tacky glue. Once I was satisfied with the time, I sealed the bottle cap with hot glue to prevent little hands from opening it or any accidental spillage.

We actually made two calm down bottles — one for our usual time out spot on the bottom step of our stairs, and one for Lil’ CB’s room for when he needs some sensory stimulation or just to play around with. I even made 2 for my classroom and my Kindergartners loved them in our class “calm down” spots. They really are mesmerizing and beautiful to watch! For a while, I couldn’t get enough of them myself! And any adult that’s come into our home has been fascinated by them, too!

So far, they’ve worked quite well as a timer and as a mechanism for learning to self-regulate!
This is actually a reenactment of a timeout provided by the acting skills of Lil’ CB. I’m actually kind of startled at how convincing of a job he did! Probably because he’s such a drama king…

We’ll continue using these bottles for a while, but hopefully we’ll be able to phase out of them (and timeouts) soon!