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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

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Create festive bottles

Make festive decorations out of plastic bottles, and put them around your home or meeting place.
Plan a session with this activity

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You’ll need

  • Clean, empty plastic bottles (500ml)
  • Paint
  • Paint brushes
  • Tables
  • Chairs
  • Glue sticks
  • Scissors
  • Something to protect the tables
  • Items to decorate the bottles, such as pipe cleaners, pom poms, wool and googly eyes
  • Wire rack

Before you begin

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
  • Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Setting up this activity

  • This activity will need some time to dry in the middle. You could consider running this over two meetings or have another activity to run while waiting for the bottles to dry.
  • Put out enough tables and chairs for everyone to have space to work at. Put the bottles, paints and craft materials on the tables, too.
  • If you wanted to, you could make an example to show everyone.
  • Cover the tables with something to protect it and place the equipment on the tables.

Decorate the bottles

  1. Explain to everyone that they’re going to make decorative bottles to place around their home for Christmas or another celebration. They can use paint, card, craft items or both.
  2. Show everyone a picture or the example bottle to help them see the final product. Then ask them to think of a festive design or character to turn their bottle into, such as a snow buddy, reindeer, Santa or an elf.
  3. Ask everyone to sit on a chair and take a bottle from the middle of the table.
  4. Explain to everyone that they need to squirt a small amount of paint into the bottle they’re using. They then need to rotate the paint around until it’s covered the whole of the inside of the bottle. If the paint appears thin or patchy, add more paint into the bottle.
  5. When it’s fully covered, place the bottle upside down on a table or wire rack over newspaper and leave them to dry in a safe, warm place.
  6. If the paint’s patchy when it’s dried, add more paint into the bottle, rotate the bottle and move the paint over the patchy areas, and leave the paint to dry again.
  7. As an alternative, people could use card and wrap it around the outside of the bottle instead. They need to secure it in place with glue, glue dots or double-sided sticky tape.
  8. Once the paint is dry, using the craft materials on the table, such as googly eyes, tissue paper and pipe cleaners, and get everyone to decorate their bottles to create the design or character they want.
  9. If needed, place the bottles in a safe, warm place to let the glue dry before taking them home.
  10. If the bottle neck is wide enough, you could put LED tealights inside them, so they light up.

Reflection

This activity needed you to be independent and try something new while creating festive decorations for your home or meeting place.

Have you made these decorated bottles before? If so, did you make a different design or character this time? Were these bottles easy to make or were parts easier than others? If you were to make one again would you do it any differently?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Scissors

Supervise young people appropriately when they’re using scissors. Store all sharp objects securely, out of the reach of young people.

Sharp objects

Teach young people how to use sharp objects safely. Supervise them appropriately throughout. Store all sharp objects securely, out of the reach of young people.

Rubbish and recycling

All items should be clean and suitable for this activity.

Glue and solvents

Always supervise young people appropriately when they’re using glue and solvent products. Make sure there’s plenty of ventilation. Be aware of any medical conditions that could be affected by glue or solvent use and make adjustments as needed.

You could prepare all the bottles in advance with different colours and then the young people can just decorate them in your meeting.

Make sure there’s enough support around to help anyone with the decorating of their bottles.

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Squirrels Get Creative Activity Badge
Beavers Creative Activity Badge

This technique can be used on different types of bottles or for different occasions.

You could use glass bottles and glass paint, then put candles in top.

Ask the young people to collect bottles from home and bring them into this meeting.