Mind Jar

I pulled this idea from Angie who blogs here, here and here.  That's right she blogs in three different places AND writes as well as contributes to other sites. Inspired?  I am.

This is her explanation of the mind jar which you can read more about here

"It is essentially like creating a snow globe, but you can help you little one pick colors, make it their own. The goal is that when they are feeling out of control, they shake the jar, then sit and watch the glitter settle in the water. It is like our minds when we are angry, frustrated, things feel impossible--our minds and emotions are all shook up. I help Bea stare and not stare at the jar, that middle gaze. When the glitter settles, we finish our meditation. This one is a really great technique to use in lieu of timeout. When our minds are shook up, we can easily get shaken up again, and that is what the jar is useful to show, how our emotions can be shook up and crazy, but we don't have to shake the jar. "

I personally love the idea.  They say it takes 30 days of repeating before something becomes habit, so my hope is in 30 days this will become part of the system. I can easily see myself using this jar for reflective thinking periods as well.

This is how we made ours....

Mix  glitter-glue with hot water, then added food coloring and a tiny tub of glitter in a jar(I chose plastic because...well I have a 2 year old boy)

After our first go at it we decided the food coloring was no good, you could hardly see the glitter swirling around in there, so we re did them.

The glue makes the water so thick and gooey that the glitter just slowly and gently swirls around, it takes about 5 minutes for all the glitter to settle, perfect to gather your thoughts!

Here's the second try.....

We drained out the color and added new glitter glue

Shake it up again

And the glitter is now much easier to see, and much much more effective.