Jellystone x Glo Pals
WRITTEN BY: MADDIE - OUR LITTLE FARMER
I am Maddie, the Australian Mum behind the Instagram account @our_little_farmer . I discovered Glo Pals well before they landed here in Australia through Glo Pals own superhero Insta mum, Jessie (back in the day before she even started working for Glo Pals!). She kept sharing these amazing, water activated, light-up cubes, and I knew we had to have some! I also knew that I did not have the patience to wait for a distributor to pick them up here in Australia, so I ordered them direct from the US. We have been loving our Glo Pal play ever since!
Fast forward 12 months, and the amazing Jellystone Designs, who we had loved since we discovered their Calm Down Bottles with our one year old, had teamed up with Glo Pals to finally bring the amazing Glo Pal products to Australia. Now let me tell you, if there are two brands that were made to be played with together, it is Glo Pals and Jellystone Designs!
To celebrate Jellystone Designs launching with Glo Pals in the US, we have put together some simple play ideas from both brands that have been hits with both our kids! I hope they are enjoyed as much in your house as they are in ours.
Color Sort
Color sorting is such a great activity for little learners, but there is one way to really level up your color sorting activities…with Glo Pals Light-Up Cubes and the Jellystone Designs Tray Play!
Fill your tray up with water, and add your Light-Up Cubes! We love the lid of our Tray Play for sorting with its different sections, so we add one of our Pals to each of the sections and sort by color in there.
Alternatively, you can use smaller colored dishes with water in them and sort by color that way instead…I mean the more water, the better, right?
Pick-up Pals
This activity is the ultimate reset activity in our house - Tray Play, Fun Fillers, Light-Up Cubes and Pick-Up Pals! Plus it takes seconds to set up, simply drop everything into your Tray Play, and let the kids dive in and explore!
The best part about this activity is once we are nearing the end of play, we add our Sensory Jars or Calm Down Bottles and scoop the left overs into them for more play another day.
Calm Down Bottles
There are so many different things you can put in a Calm Down Bottle and activities you can use them for. Here are our top picks!
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PLUFFLE!!!!
Who doesn’t love Pluffle, and more so, who doesn’t love a mess-free play option for Pluffle! We also added Safari Mini’s to our bottle to add to the effect when we were watching the movement of the Pluffle. Make sure you leave ¼ of the bottle empty to get the best movement effect.
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Search and Find Bottles
This one is a great activity for on the go! Find some mini figures of your kid’s favorite characters and add them to a Calm Down Bottle with some rice. We used the mini figures from a busy book but you could also create them using any loose parts or craft items such as pom poms, googly eyes, buttons, sequins, etc.
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High Contrast Bottle
The fact that these Calm Down Bottles can be used from such a young age is an amazing feature about them! One of my favorite ever Calm Down Bottles that we made was a high contrast bottle using the World Cup special release. This would look just as effective in one of the darker bottle colours, though. To fill this bottle, we used shredded coconut, black pom poms and silver glitter. I expected that this bottle would have to be refreshed quickly with the coconut, but I was wrong - two years later and it is still going strong.
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Bubbling Lava Lamps
This one still stands as my five-year-olds favorite Calm Down Bottle EVER! Pour oil into your Calm Down Bottle until it is one inch above the bumper. Add food coloring and mix. Top up with water, leaving one inch at the top. Drop in ½ an Alka Seltzer and watch the lava bubbles form. Once finished, you can fill the bottle completely with water, seal, and leave as a fun experiment on mixing different liquids.
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Themed Bottles
I love creating Calm Down Bottles for specific themes! Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Dinosaurs, Halloween, Easter, you name it. If there is a theme, I love the challenge of putting something together. It does not need to be complicated either. Our Easter Calm Down Bottles have pastel colored rice and foam eggs. Valentine's Day – pink water, glitter, pom poms and hearts. Halloween – orange water, google eyes, pom poms. Christmas – anything red I can find, from dice to pipe cleaners, stars and gems all filled up with green rice. The possibilities are endless when it comes to Jellystone Calm Down Bottles.
Be sure to shop all of these (plus more!) amazing Jellystone products on our site! As always tag #glopals and follow @glopals for more inspiration and ways to play! 🦖⭐️☺️
