Make a homemade night light

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

• Check for allergies and adjust the empty jars as needed. This may include making sure no-one uses jars that have had certain ingredients in them, such as no peanut butter jars.
• You’ll need to gather lots of empty, clear and clean plastic jars with lids. You could ask each person to bring one in or gather them over a term.

Running this activity

1. Gather everyone together and tell them you’re all going to make a recycled night light.
2. Everyone should take their empty plastic jar and a plastic bowl. 
3. Paint the plastic bowl and jar lid with acrylic paint, then set it to one side to dry thoroughly.
4. Tie a knot at each end of your cotton rope or wide ribbon. Starting from the inside of your jar, push the center of your rope through the hole. From the outside, pull the center out and pull up to create a handle.
5. Next, take the jar and turn it upside down. This is actually going to turn into the top of your lantern.
6. With adult supervision, create a hole through the bottom of the clear jar. An adult could also do this for everyone. Make sure to keep your fingers out of the way. 
7. Take a piece of cotton rope or ribbon, then tie a knot at each end that’s bigger than the hole. Starting from the inside of your jar, push the middle of the rope or ribbon through the hole. From the outside, pull the centre of the rope or ribbon out and pull up to create a handle. The knots should prevent the rope or ribbon from coming through the hole.
8. Once it’s dry, with adult supervision, use scissors to cut a small hole in the middle of the bottom of your plastic bowl. Make sure to keep your fingers out of the way.
9. With your bowl bottom-side up, push the handle up through the hole and pull the bowl down, so it covers your jar, making the lantern lid.
10. Take the jar lid and an LED candle. Put one side of a Velcro dot on the bottom of your LED candle and the other in the middle of your jar lid. When you want to light up your lantern, you can unscrew the lid, carefully peel the candle from the Velcro, turn your tea light on, then stick it back to Velcro and screw the lid back on.
11. Next, make the inner part of the nightlight using translucent baking paper. 
12. Fold a large square of baking paper in half, as this helps it to hold its shape in the jar and stand up straight. Measure the height and lid diameter of your jar, then cut your paper down to size, so it’ll fit inside.
13. Cut or tear pieces of colourful tissue paper to decorate the baking paper and glue them on. The tissue paper can be in fun shapes, geometric shapes or anything else you like. You could also use stamps, draw with crayons and felt tips, or decorate it with glow-in-the-dark stickers. Remember, anything used needs to be slightly see through, so the light can get through. 
14. Once it’s finished, roll the paper into a cylinder and slide it into your jar. Make sure to press it against the edge of the jar.
15. Screw the back lid on and your lantern is ready to use.
16. You can then decorate the outside of the lantern too, if you wish.