Kids Craft – Halloween Sensory Busy Jar

This kids craft tutorial shows you how to make a Halloween sensory jar for kids as a calm down or therapy tool

What you need

Plastic jars
Wobbly or Googly eyes in the various sizes
water
baby oil

Instructions

 

This DIY kids craft tutorial is all about the sensors and we are showing you how to make a sensory bottle for your children to use when they are bored or suffering from anxiety or sensory overload and need a time out.

This tutorial is for making sensory Halloween themed eye jas. For this project, you will need some plastic jars or bottles. We used juice tubs for ours and removed the drink labels with nail polish remover.

Add the eyes into the bottles and fill the bottle with 3/4 of water. You can add food colouring or glitter at this point also.

Finish off the bottle by filling with the baby oil, this adds bubbles to the bottle and to weigh down the movement of the plastic eyes. For this sensory bottle, we used plastic eyes but you can add any small toys that interest your child.

Once you are finished glue on the lid and secure tightly.

Sensory bottles or calm down bottles work by giving the child something to focus on for a moment or two whilst the anxiety or anger passes. Sensory bottles are also known as calm down bottles or busy bottles. It doesn’t matter what you call them as long as your child gets satisfaction out of making and playing with them.

These calm down or senosry bottles work on older children too, especially if they are part of the making process and get to select what goes inside their bottles. You could use lego, toy trinkets and other collectables inside the bottles to gain your child’s focus.

How do sensory or calm down bottles work? The key is in the slow movement of the items inside the bottles. Whether it is small trinkets, air bubbles or oil bubbles. They help the child to focus their brain on the small movement and slow down, they slow down their breathing and in turn regulate their brain waves to a calmer level.

Sensory bottles are not just about calming down they are a fun way to introduce math and science to your children at and early age. You can add plastic numbers, letters or colors for a child. Sensory bottles can be about a find a seek play for multiple items and educational learning for young or preschool children.