Jellyfish in a bottle pin

Here's the resource: Bhoomplay's blog

So I thought the Jellyfish in a bottle looked pretty magical.  In reality it was a lot more work than I thought it would be and I'm not sure we were successful.  I need to experiment more with it to make it better.  Neither of my older boys, 7 and 5, are very comfortable with scissors.  My youngest, almost 3, isn't either but he thinks he is.  So my oldest two were crying for my help while the youngest was crying that I was helping too much.  It really turned into a craft I should have just made for them instead of had them help me.  I could have had them read about Jellyfish or draw jellyfish while I made the bottles so that we could have had together time but they and I might not have been so frustrated.  Or maybe I should have involved them more in the process to fix the problems we were having. 

Problems:
I think our jelly fish were a little big for the containers at first. 
I missed the part about an air bubble in the head so I need to see if that helps fix things.
It just turned out kind of blah and I expected it to look more magical. 

Initially it just looked like a mess of plastic at the top of the bottle.  It moved when we tipped it but it just looked like a mess of plastic. So I cut off tentacles and tried to cut some skinnier to fix it and it sort of worked.  I think if I were to do it again I would  put the head in the top of the bottle and then cut the tentacles that were hanging down from there.  I think that would have spread the plastic out into a better pattern for the kids to see where to cut.  I think you need to tie a string around the neck a second time after you fill it with water.  This second string can be tied tighter since you have already filled it with water. Other than that I think just go for thin tentacles.  I was kind of lazy about this especially as I was trying to get my kids to cut themselves.

Here's our project.  I used to Dion's Ranch dressing bottles and one Simply Cranberry Drink for our bottles. I used a clear office trash bag for the jellyfish.

 What I gave the kids to cut.

 The finished product...

So to sum up  I would do this with older kids who are more familiar with scissors or just make the project myself while they watched or did other jellyfish activities; I would make the head a little bigger and the tentacles skinnier; I need to put an air bubble in; I would trouble shoot with the kids' ideas too; I would tie two strings around the head.  Maybe I will do some trouble shooting after the kids are in bed and see how it looks in the morning...