What’s cooking…
(I… know. The younger one has this… crazed look a lot of the time…)
The kids almost always have a hard time falling asleep at bedtime, especially the older one. (He travels relatively better on long-haul however, because he sleeps in a stretch whatever time he finally goes down. Much more predictable than the younger one who is also a much lighter sleeper in general.)
Hence, we tried the “mind jar” from the Miss’ yoga class – watching the sparkles is supposed to quiet them down, and I had the brainwave to make Rockstar one because he says one reason he can’t get to sleep is because he can’t stop thinking about his day (this is also partly why he has a huge pile of books next to his bed 😀 But then he can read like, forever, and so you kinda have to forcefully remove take the book from him and read it while screaming at him telling him to close his eyes and go. To. Sleep! Because otherwise you will also be reading like, forever. As in, you will fall asleep and he will kick you awake ask you to please keep reading because he simply can’t get to sleep. This has been the case since Kindy days when he famously had me read maybe 20 Mr Men books at a time.)
(Oh yeah, they wake and immediately start doing puzzles too. This is actually a not-so-bad day, because on other occasions all the bedding is on the floor and the two are hiding GI Joe style in a “camouflage trench” waiting to ambush you)
Anyway, Mind Jar.
The Miss’ yoga teacher gave everyone the recipe to making these things – with empty Prego pasta sauce jars, HKD 10 glitter glue from a Ma and Pa stationery store and enough hot water to dissolve the glue, before topping it off with an extra bit of loose glitter. (Needless to say the kids got kinda carried away with the loose glitter, which I let them stir in after the hot water-glitter glue mixture had cooled down.)
The glitter glue is so when you shake it the sparkles don’t all sink to the bottom of the jar at the same time. She even had a combi for Frozen jars. (Oh, and another nugget of information is I once asked where I’d seen her before, and besides being an early education teacher and certified yoga instructor with some education in child psychology, she used to be on tv doing local children’s programs! No surprise come to think of it because she’s very bubbly and cheery, even when the Miss is running all over the place 😛 Sorry I don’t have a picture of her handy, next time if you really want I will ask her lah, but otherwise just go ask Safari Kid for the after school yoga class…)
Finished product
The Miss calls hers “Raspberry Sparkle,” which we made with the glitter glue pictured above and bright red loose sparkles; Rockstar’s took a little more work. You can’t see the heavy swirly patterns from mixing blue and silver loose glitter with light green glitter glue, but his is named……
Van Gogh’s Starry Night – pic from Wikipedia.com
…….. “Wah Beh Pai-Say” <nudge><nudge><wink><wink>
Oh yeah I’ll be adding 11 confetti stars and a moon to Beh Pai Say Jar. Ahem…
