So, making cool down bottles is always a fan favorite to make in my small groups. And guess what? It’s a WINNER activity online too!
How’d I set it up? Briefly, I made kits putting the supplies in ziploc bags, set the bags in a tub, put the tub outside school, emailed parents to come pick up supplies, we all made bottles during group and we will follow up with using our bottles as a coping skill (in our next group). For detailed HOW TO… see below. Spoiler. It was awesome!
- STEP 1
- Each kit consisted of:
- 1 water bottle. (I bought sturdy water bottles to distribute. I do this instead of asking them to save a water bottle just so we all have it and the kids don’t have to rely on their parents in order to make one. )
- a plastic vial full of glitter (you could use a tiny ziploc or tupperware too.
- 1/3 to 1/2 filed clear glue bottle ( you could always give them a full bottle, but they only need 1/3. I am one of those people who keeps empties and buys the industrial size to refill.. so I could actually give them just as much as they needed)
STEP 2: Then I put all the supplies in a ziploc bag and put them in a tub. The tub went outside the school’s front doors. Since we still have remote learners… and my group was 100% remote learners… there were other tubs out there.
STEP 3: I emailed parents letting them know that there were materials ready for pick up in the tub marked “Ms. King” outside of school.
STEP 4: Group Time! Did a couple of kids not pick up their supplies? yup! But they watched so they knew what to do and I emailed parents again for pick up reminder. I included the directions for creating this which comes from my Mindset Matters curriculum on page xx, but there are tons of variations all overthe web.
I miss doing craft projects and this was a perfect way to let these virtual students have a sense of belonging, while we also talked about using this bottle as a coping skill. We will expand on learnign about coping skills in the lesson we do next week in group.
The students loved this. I loved this. Can’t wait to get back to crafting with the kids F2F, but in the meantime, I was glad the kids got to do soemthing hands on. Best story for how I know that this lesson had impact? The next day remote kids were coming in for standardized testing (don’t get me started on testing during a pandemic!!!). One kiddo walked in with …. you guessed it… his cool down bottle! He said his dad made an amazing slow motion video of it. Home-School Connection. ✔CHECK!✔
QUESTIONS about any of the deets? Email me and I’ll happily talk you through it.