Have you heard of calm bottle? It looks something like this (picture from another website).
What is calm bottle and what is it use for?
From the name given to this type of bottles, you can tell is for calming. Therapists, teachers and parents are using it to calm overstimulated children or when they are upset. There are many ways to calm a child and this is one of the ways that is being used.
How does it help?
The calming bottle helps to self-regulate a child by having the chid to focus on the bottle. Sometimes when a child gets extremely upset, he/she may need a physical outlet. The child may want to kick or hit someone or something. Instead of this type of destructive action, the calm bottle will comes in.
What the child needs to do is to shake the bottle as hard as he/she wants to (Warning: Do NOT use glass bottle!) and after which the child is able to watch the glitter fall. At this point, as the child starts focusing on the bottle, it helps to organise and centralised his/her nervous system. Unconsciously, the child starts to calm down. Amazing, isn’t it?
We made a calm bottle ourselves but not glitter bottle as shown above. Instead, we made a tornado bottle. Oh yeah! It was suppose to be a science experiment but I discovered this to be calming as well. Here’s how gor gor made the bottle on his own except the taping of the 2 bottles together which he needed some help with.
Instructions:-
Step 1:
Fill one bottle 3/4 full of water.
Cut a round shaped cardboard according to the size of the opening of the bottle with a hole in the middle.
Step 2:
Taped the 2 bottles together.
Step 3:
Check if the water does flow and no water leakage!
Step 4:
Double up the taping with masking tape and test over the basin to avoid cleaning up! 😛
Step 5:
All checked and we can start using the bottle 🙂
Not bad! A tornado bottle that has become a calming bottle gor gor. He loves playing with it and when he does get really upset, he will shake it real hard, turned it upside down and watches the water flow down to the other empty bottle.
Our own version of calm bottle. Try it! Is calming….