If you've got something small that you want to show off, but don't want to get damaged, keep it safe AND on display. Make a treasure in a bottle charm out of it!
My kids and I have done this craft before with lots of little treasures, but on this particular occasion, we are going to make a treasure in a bottle charm or two out of some small fossilized shark teeth that we collected ourselves. We love fossils, and we love sharks, AND we love things that we do ourselves, so there's no way that we weren't going to show these beauties off!
Make a Treasure in a Bottle Charm
This project is a little unusual for me, as you do need a couple of special supplies that you likely can't upcycle or find in nature, so don't be afraid to spend a little time shopping around.
very small glass bottle. I prefer a real glass bottle--not plastic!--with a real cork. You may have to look around for this, as a lot of the jewelry findings that you'll come across will be plastic.
glycerin or sand. There are a couple of different ways to do this project, one with glycerin and one with sand. Beach sand will work unless you want to add water or oil to make the scene look like an ocean in a bottle; if you want a mini ocean, I have learned--from experience!--that you really need to use clean craft sand, not beach sand, alas.
treasures. We used a shark tooth plus a couple of tiny shells for each bottle.
eye pin. If you're going to keep your treasure in a bottle on a shelf, you won't need an eye pin, but if you want it as a charm or pendant, you'll need this plus a pair of jewelry wire cutters.
1. Thoroughly clean the glass bottle. You want the opening, especially, to be squeaky clean, as that's where the glue will adhere, but you'd be surprised how much dust can be found on the inside of a brand-new, unopened bottle, sigh. I use rubbing alcohol on a q-tip, but if you don't like to use rubbing alcohol, vinegar will also work.
2. Add your treasure. The most frustrating thing for my kids is the fact that the mouths of the bottles are so small that not every treasure will fit inside. If you're going to suspend your treasure in a bottle, you don't really want one that's very large, anyway, so just keep this fact in mind for the purposes of expectation management.
3. Fill the bottle up to the neck with glycerin. I use an eye dropper, and try (mostly in vain) to keep the glycerin from touching the inside of the neck. If you do drip--and you will!--wipe it down again with your cleaning solution.
If you've got shells in your bottle, it's a good idea to let the bottle rest for a day before the next step. The little air pockets in the shells will gradually work their way out, and if you don't want bubbles in your bottle forever, you want them to do this before it's sealed.
4. Glue the cork on. Put a small amount of epoxy glue around the outside of the cork, then push it into the bottle.
5. Cut an eye pin to fit. You don't want it to poke out of the bottom of your cork, so trim it with wire cutters.
6. Insert the eye pin. Again, put a small amount of epoxy glue around the outside of the eye pin, then push it into the center of the bottle.
This treasure in a bottle makes a lovely pendant for a necklace, but also a beautiful Christmas ornament, especially for a tabletop tree. I think it looks equally pretty, though, just sitting in a shadow box, ready to be admired by all who walk by!
The shell collection was in storage in the same place as the rocks and fossils, so if Will and I were going to spend a day playing with, organizing, and displaying her favorite rocks and my favorite fossils, we might as well do the same with our favorite shells!
I love Will's organization of shells in this Riker mount:
We also did a little identification then, labeling plastic sandwich bags and sorting shells inside. We researched some shells further, and pinned slips of paper with more details to the baggies.
Obviously, then, I had to use one of our precious Riker mounts to preserve some of our work. Look at that sweet little Syd handwriting labeling the Atlantic Kitten Paws!
In the ensuing years, our crafting collection of seashells has been well-loved. We've made seashell pendants, glittered and painted them, used them in sailor's valentines, and incorporated them into all kinds of other projects. We've got shells on the Christmas tree, and shell mosaics on the walls. Our scientific display will be in good company!
When I look at our other scientific displays, the fossils from Penn Dixie and the rocks from here and there, I mostly think about how cool my specimens are. Even the Penn Dixie fossils, the gathering of which are some of my most pleasant memories, mostly inspire in me awe at my little trilobite pieces, not reminiscences of how contentedly I chipped them out of the rock.
But when I look at these Riker mounts full of shells, labeled or not, I remember walking on the beach with two little girls wearing swim trunks and surf shirts, their sandy hair in their faces, Dollar Store plastic buckets in their hands. We collected all the best shells, used most of them to decorate sandcastles, then the kids ran out to float on the ocean in their pink and blue inner tubes while I played lifeguard. A storm was coming, but was still far out on the horizon as we played, just enough to make the edge of the sky look interesting when I took my photos. We had a hotel room booked for the night, in which we'd eat Easy Mac and peanut butter sandwiches, and we thought that in just a few days we were going to watch a Space Shuttle launch.
It was peaceful, and pleasant, and I've never been happier.
Anyway, that's what I think about every time I look at these Riker mounts of our shell collection.
With a multi-level Girl Scout troop, activities tend to snowball. I'm absolutely of the mindset that not everybody has to earn a badge for everything, but... to be honest, I'm actually not so much of that mindset in practice, not with my older Girl Scouts. It was different when they were Brownies and Juniors, we met up more often, and they were all eager beavers who could be counted on to also earn a ton of badges outside of meetings.
Now that they're all big kids, we don't meet up as often for badgework. The kids are all too busy with all their other kid stuff! Combine that with the fact that older Girl Scout badges are more work and take longer to earn, and these busy kids don't really earn them on their own at home, anymore, either.
So when we do make the time to meet together, in an activity that the kids have chosen and are enthusiastic about, then yeah, I want them all to be able to earn a badge for their work.
And because they're at three different levels, that means three different badges.
For this meeting, the activity that the kids were enthusiastic about was finding fossils in our local creek. One of our troop co-leaders is an expert in local fossils and spends much of her free time looking for them in the many creeks around town, so she and her Girl Scout took charge of the fossil activities. I added in water activities to fill in most of the rest of the steps to earn the Cadette Eco Trekker, Senior Eco Explorer, and Ambassador Water badges, and the kids collaborated on the activity for Step 5 for each badge.
Field Trip to a Local Creek: Cadette Eco Trekker Badge Step 1
I didn't discover creek stomping until I moved to this little Indiana town, but now it's one of my favorite activities. When my kids were small, I'd put them into their swim trunks and we'd all go down to our favorite creek. We probably never walked more than half a mile in either direction down the creek, but still we could stay there for most of the day, me reading on a bank while the kids splashed and fought and caught crawdads and minnows and filled their pockets with fossils and geodes.
It turns out that going to the creek with teenagers is much the same!
Lesson on Fossils and Geodes: Senior Eco Explorer Badge Steps 1-2, Ambassador Water Badge Step 1
My co-leader gave the kids a lecture on crinoids, the main fossil that we find locally. She showed them images of what crinoids looked like when they were alive and examples of fossils from her extensive collection. She can look at a fossil and tell you exactly what part of a crinoid it is, which is a super cool superpower!
Afterwards, the kids played in the creek and hunted for fossils and geodes:
I'm really glad that I remembered to bring my rock hammer, because it was a hit (ba-dum-dum!)! Everybody likes bashing open a geode and seeing what magic is inside.
Stream Health Assessment and Water Quality Testing: Cadette Eco Trekker Badge Steps 3-4, Senior Eco Explorer Badge Steps 3-4, Ambassador Water Badge Steps 3-4
I get bored with the similar structure of Girl Scout badges, but it sure does help with a multi-level troop! Steps 3 and 4 of each badge ask the Girl Scout to explore and work on an ecosystem issue; for the Ambassadors, the issue must be water-related.
To complete these steps, I taught the troop how to conduct a visual stream assessment, combining this worksheet with this contextual information. We talked about floodplains, channelizing, banks and erosion, and habitats for macroinvertebrates. Our town just experienced a major flood, and its impact on numerous local businesses has been in the news, so we also discussed how proper stream management is crucial not just for the sake of the natural environment, but also for urban infrastructure. One of the flooded businesses is located directly on the floodplain of a creek, and our entire downtown, which flooded so quickly that patrons were trapped in bars and restaurants, sits directly on top of another creek that was closed in and covered by a heavily-trafficked street. The flash flooding was a big disaster, with one person dead and one business still closed due to the damage; if the city had respected the creek's floodplain and maintained its riparian buffer zone, it likely wouldn't have been so dangerous or caused so much damage.
If you want to add more context, particularly regarding your area's overall watershed, these topographic maps are a great resource.
A visual assessment is a great way to monitor a stream's overall health, but you can't get the whole picture with just your eyes alone. I wanted the kids to get some experience conducting chemical analyses, so I walked them all through how to collect water samples, then we reconvened under a nearby picnic shelter and I taught them how to do several of the tests from my favorite water monitoring kit:
With the supplies that I had left after Will's APES labs, the kids were able to test for dissolved oxygen, fecal coliform, nitrate, and pH. While we did the tests, we discussed the importance of dissolved oxygen, the fine line that is nitrate, and how fertilizer and sewage runoff are so dangerous partly because they're so nutritious for bacteria and algae, which will consume all the dissolved oxygen if they grow too much, and that will suffocate all the rest of the life in the stream.
Both the dissolved oxygen and nitrate results for our stream were shockingly low, and I am VERY curious about that!
Make an Art Project: Ambassador Water Badge Step 2
Fortunately, my co-leader is also an artist who works with fossils, and so she was able to set the kids up to make absolutely beautiful collages with some of their fossils and cool rocks:
The kids had a fabulous time with this activity as they explored aesthetically-pleasing ways to display their collections. Some kids made collages in pendants, some made collages in frames, and some organized their collections in little bottles. They all turned out so cute!
Share What You Learned: Cadette Eco Trekker Step 5, Senior Eco Explorer Step 5, and Ambassador Water Badge Step 5
All the badges we covered have, for their final step, an activity that encourages the kids to pass on their knowledge, teach someone, educate, inspire, etc. Girl Scouts really encourages kids to find their voices, and older kids, especially, are often asked to try their hands at mentoring or teaching.
The kids in my troop each completed this final step independently, although we talked about possible avenues for sharing while they worked on their art projects, and they edited a Google Doc of ideas and possible scripts together. We brainstormed possibilities like writing a letter to our local Parks and Recreation Department informing them of the results of our water quality testing, writing a letter to the newspaper, making a flyer or brochure and displaying it or passing it around, writing a Google Maps review of the park with our water quality test results included, and other ideas. When we meet again, they can share what they shared!
When I teach kids, I always wonder if the info stuck. Did they learn anything, or were they just along for the ride? Did they understand the importance of dissolved oxygen and nitrates, or were they just dropping tablets into water and looking at the pretty colors? After all, I know well that a polite, biddable kid can act like they're 100% with you, doing everything you ask, with their eyes glazed over and cartoons playing in their head.
HOWEVER... this morning, my kids and I spent a couple of hours at a local park, hanging out with friends while Will completed a science lab (nectar guides for the win!). On the walk back to the car, we went across a pedestrian bridge over one of our town's many, many creeks. I stopped to look down at the water, and the kids stopped with me.
"Hmmm," one said. "This creek has definitely been channelized. And it doesn't have a very good riparian buffer zone."
"It's got fish, though, so it must have some habitat for macroinvertebrates."
This school year, I don't particularly know what Will was doing on her first day, as I was busy helping Syd figure out HER first day of navigating a school-issued shitty laptop, Canvas, Microsoft Teams, and a schedule of live and asynchronous lessons that, I kid you not, completely changed every two weeks for months.
It continued much like that for the entire school year. Will worked mostly independently while I gave most of my emotional and mental energy to supporting Syd. Will worked her butt off, kept to her schedule, and completed her tasks, more or less off of my radar. It's not how we've ever homeschooled before, it's not how I like to homeschool, and I hope it's not how we'll homeschool next year, but Will made it work.
Now that we're both fully vaccinated, though, I was SO ready to surprise my hard-working kid with a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo on her last day of eleventh grade!
I think this might be the first time that I've ever taken Will to the zoo without her sister along? It certainly never happened when I was homeschooling two kids, and thanks to the pandemic, none of the field trips I'd hoped to take with just Will this school year materialized--we didn't so much as go to the art museum across town together, much less that trip to Florida we'd been planning and looking forward to, sigh.
I reminded Will, then, that SHE was in charge of our day. She decided where we went, what we saw, and how long we stayed at each exhibit. This meant, of course, that we went EVERYWHERE. We saw EVERYTHING. And we stayed in front of each exhibit for a completely interminable twenty minutes, at LEAST. I mean, you apparently have to read the signage, then watch the animals for a billion years, then read the signage again, then watch the animals before. Maybe check out that sign again. Maybe peek just one more time at the animals. Then walk fifty feet and repeat with another set of animals.
For instance, we probably hung out at the touch tank for an hour. Field trips and families came and went, splashing and screaming obnoxiously and scaring the Chondricthyans over in the other part of the tank, but Will and I camped out at one quiet end, where she leaned over quietly and calmly and proceeded to pet every creature in that habitat:
We had to skip ahead to the penguins and then circle back to the sea lions because there were too many unmasked breathers our first time through:
We were pretty sure that some scientist stole these from the macaques they were studying, and we're pissed on their behalf:
Apparently, Will has grown out of wanting to sit in the splash zone during the dolphin show, but I haven't grown out of laughing with delight every time a dolphin so much as moves its flipper:
At the flamingo habitat, there was a zoo employee running a virtual field trip on his phone. I was VERY impressed at his ability to livestream flamingos, see all the tiny Zoom hands raised, acknowledge children by name, and ready-reference various facts... on a PHONE. These days, I have to push my glasses down my nose and peer nearsightedly just to read my email on my phone!
The rock hyrax was my favorite animal on this day. Look at its silly little munching face!
We were watching the lemurs when it started to rain, and it was absolutely hilarious to see them run for their indoor enclosure as fast as the humans running for the awnings!
This tiger is very impressive because there's a toddler right behind us, and the tiger wants to eat it:
There were places in the zoo where I was anxious about our safety, because vaccinated or not, I don't want to cram in with a bunch of random people all breathing in the same space. Will and I got ourselves trapped under the tiger awning when a bunch of people with strollers rolled in right after us and took up all the walking room. I was pretty cool about it until a preschooler, stumbling around and touching all the things, coughed directly on Will's... knees, I guess, but still. I might have panicked a bit because all I really remember is covering Will's mouth and nose with my hand, taking her arm, and marching her straight out of there, double strollers packed with babies be damned. We were several feet down the path before I realized that I was literally smothering my uncomplaining child and let her go.
We also had a bad time hanging out inside with the orangutans, thanks to a hundred thousand adult breathers who felt like masks violate their civil rights. I saw one woman who was wearing a a face... veil, I guess? It was made of something gauzy and only tied at the top, so every time she leaned over to tend her two toddlers it simply floated out of the way of her and all her mouth germs. One of her toddlers sneezed without covering its mouth and I dragged Will out of there, only barely remembering not to smother her this time.
But look at the outside of the orangutan habitat!
Way up there is an orangutan looking down on us!
We were much happier in the desert, where Will could lean against the rails and admire every animal individually for twenty minutes at a time while all the other breathers wandered by without stopping:
My nerves might have been a little bit shot by this time, because I came closer than I ever have in my life to screaming at a stranger in front of the meerkat habitat. Will and I, both unused to public outings, had been low-key irritated by every other human at the zoo for a while: why do they all talk so loudly? Why do they insist on shouting at their children to look at some particular thing, and then as soon as the kid gets interested, work just as hard to wheedle the kid away to go look at some other thing? Why do they all scream the name of every animal's cartoon counterpart when they see it? Why do they all wear their masks under their grossly breathing noses?
So there Will and I were, minding our own business quietly watching the meerkats go about theirs, when a family rolls up next to us. Of course they've got a double stroller, and of course they're talking super loudly, and of course when the dad sees the meerkats he starts to scream, sort of attempting to be tuneful, "MOVE IT, MOVE IT! MOVE IT, MOVE IT!"
Then, when nobody in his family responds, he screams, "Get it? Like the movie!"
Oh. My. Gawd.
First of all, THAT IS NOT THE CORRECT MOVIE. The movie with the "Move it, Move it" song is about LEMURS. WHICH ARE ALSO IN THIS ZOO. He could go obnoxiously sing that song to the lemurs and at least be accurate, if still unbearable.
Second of all, meerkats HAVE A SONG. FROM A DIFFERENT MOVIE. WHICH IS MORE FAMOUS THAN MADAGASCAR. Seriously, have you never heard of, oh, I don't know... THE LION KING?!? He could still sing an obnoxious song to the meerkats! Surely he knows at least the chorus of "Hakuna Matata"?!?
Here's Will sharing a commiserating look with a meerkat who I bet knows all the words to "Hakuna Matata" by now:
The cheetahs are also my zoo favorites, ever since the day after a family trip to the zoo we found out that one of them had escaped its enclosure! Cheetahs really just love to lay around and be comfy, and this cheetah (one of the brothers below), saw a comfier spot above his habitat and hopped on up to it. He happily napped there until a zoo employee just happened to spot him.
Here's another set of cheetah siblings who also love each other:
Okay, my other OTHER favorite part of the zoo is when we come during the spring and summer and the butterflies are in their pavilion!
After visiting with every single butterfly, we had just enough time to see every single flower in the outdoor gardens, too:
This thing is so cool! It's a super heavy ball that you can roll around the sand to make prints themed to the current season:
The balls for the other seasons are stored on pedestals around it:
We were waiting at the front gate the second that this zoo opened, and we did not drag ourselves out until five minutes after it closed. I'd say it was a successful last day of eleventh grade!
