Mindfulness Jars

Our "calm" jars with glitter settled at the bottom.

As many of you may know I have been homeschooling my daughters for 3 years now. You may hear that it is common for homeschooling mothers to change their homeschool routine, curriculum, and style throughout the years. That is something I can definitely vouch for because here we are finishing up 1st grade and getting ready for the next school year. We finally found a schedule, style, and curriculum that seems to work best and is helping us accomplish the educational goals I have always wanted.

With that being said, I find it very important to implement self care, self love, and mindfulness into our homeschool routine. I find that many curriculums focus on religious study and I can understand how important that is. However, I feel loving oneself and teaching our little humans how to care for their minds, body, health, and emotions is probably more important. I want to teach my children to trust themselves and love themselves. I want them to be aware of their thoughts and feelings. They can then gain more control over their minds and selves.

So, every morning before we begin our formal lessons, one of the things I like to start off with is a positive affirmation that my girls can repeat. I also try to schedule different crafts, exercises, and projects that fall into this subject. It can be anything like yoga, exercise, self care, meditation, and breathing exercises for example.

I recently came across a video of a mother making mindfulness jars with her children. I thought it was a fun project to try. So, we decided to try it. Let's talk a bit of mindfulness and my experience.

Mindfulness teaches our kids to be aware of their thoughts and feelings. I've always taught the girls that it's okay to feel sad, angry, upset, happy etc. And that I will love them unconditionally. I've taught them to be aware and express their feelings. I of course try to remain connected with my daughters and be there to teach them how to deal with their feelings. As part of our morning self love lessons, we have recently been reading about how bad thoughts lead to bad feelings, so we are learning how to turn those bad thought into positive thoughts so we can have happier feelings and be happier people.

Mindfulness jars can help us learn about our feelings and can help us calm down. The glitter in the jar represents all our thoughts and feelings rummaging around in our heads. Once the glitter falls to the bottom that represents our thoughts and feelings calming down. The jars can be a form of meditation tool, as well, all we need to do is take a seat and look at the pretty colors and glitter floating around and clear our mind to help us feel relax even when we're feeling content. This can tie our minds and the mindfulness jar to positive thoughts, so when we decide to use the jar to help us calm down we can relate the jar to positivity.

The jar can be a starting point to teaching your children mindfulness, but remember this is a great thing for adults to try. You can have a jar on your desk or nightstand and it can be a reminder to stay mindful and present in the now, so that you can always check on yourself and take control of your thoughts and feelings. Remember, taking control of our thoughts and feelings puts us in control of our lives.

So, down below I have listed the materials needed to make a mindfulness jar. It is easy to make and you may already have the materials needed at home. You can also check out this video of my girls and I making the jars.

How To Make Mindfulness Jars

What you need:

Glass or Plastic Bottles (mason jars, Voss bottles)
Clear Glue
1-2 tbsp Glitter
Water
Clear Soap (optional)
1-2 drops Food Coloring (optional)

Remove labels from your jar. Fill 1/3 of the way up with water.
Add glue and glitter. Mix around with a spoon. The more glue you add the slower it will take for the glitter to fall to the bottom.
Add food coloring if desired, but not too much because you want to be able to see the glitter.
Fill the rest of the way up with water if you still have space. Seal cap. Shake bottle. Done!

*Note: In our video above we didn't have much clear glue so we used clear hand soap along with the glue, as we've seen in another video, and it worked fine.

Let me know if you tried the jar in the comments section below. Thank you so much for reading!

With Love, Melissa