Materials:
-small (20 oz or so) water bottle
-super glue (or some kind of strong glue that adheres to plastic and is water resistant)
-glitter, sequins, plastic jewels, shiny things, small plastic toys, glittery things
If you drink bottled water and have all those plastic bottles to get rid of, you'll love this activity.
This is a super easy project that produces a really fun toy to play with, and you're also recycling at the same time (yay, eco friendly). I made several of these when I was younger and loved them.
First, remove any labels and sticker residue and rinse out the bottle.
Next, gather your shiny/glittery objects. You're going to want to pick stuff that will last in water, no paper or fragile things. Plastic jewels, glitter, confetti, even a couple small plastic or rubber toys. You don't want to put too much stuff in though, because it can get cluttered and muddy looking. A good rule of thumb is to fill no more than a fourth (or about three inches worth) of the bottle. Think of a kaleidoscope--a few jewels are more eye catching than a ton of them.
Fill your bottle with water, leaving a couple inches' worth of room at the top.
Add a drop of bleach so that the water doesn't get icky (we learned this the hard way--the water went bad and it turned the sparkle bottle into a slimy bottle).
Now, put glue around the mouth of the bottle and inside the cap. Twist the cap on as tight as you can, and let the glue set before you start flipping the bottle around. There's nothing worse than a kid working the cap off and getting glittery water everywhere (or worse, drinking it!).
You now have your own sparkle bottle! Go find some sun coming through a window and roll your bottle across the floor, or tilt it back and forth to throw cool light effects on the walls.
It's fun to make more than one of these, because you can experiment with different materials. Make a bottle with just glitter, or only jewels, you could add some buttons or let your kids come up ideas for things to add. You can add pretty much anything as long as it won't puncture the bottle or come apart in the water.
Instead of using water bottles, you can also try baby food jars to make mini ones.
I'd love to hear feedback from you, feel free to e-mail me comments, suggestions, ideas, thoughts at elisabeth.preble@gmail.com
