2020 is entering its final slice of the year and it will soon be Christmas meaning the year of the year in nigh, let’s hope 2021 is big improvement. It has been a strange year, but children will have created some good memories along the way and will create lots more come the festive season. Christmas is a time for friends, family, creating memories and the best way to hang on to them and remember them is by keeping a keepsake or memory jar. They are an excellent way of keeping your memories safe and secure in a fun way.
John Adams have two different themed keepsake jars for children called Star Jarz to help encourage children to keep their memories safe and secure in a fun and creative way. We were sent both jars for review. The jars are themed Best Friends Forever and Secrets & Dreams.
Each jar is supplied with:
- Plastic light up jar with lid
- Jar wrap
- Tag
- 24 page activity booklet
- 40 tokens
- Sheet of stickers
The girls were both really happy when the Star Jarz arrived, with the youngest picking the Best Friends Forever themed jar (it comes in pink packaging which is her favourite colour), leaving the eldest with the Secrets & Dreams jar (blue packaging, and blue just happens to be her favourite colour). The themes were quite apt for their current ages at eight and eleven. With two happy children they were keen to get started with the jars and soon got to talking about their favourite memories, not just of this year but as far back as they could remember.
The jar is about 22cm tall (including the lid) and looks a bit like a lantern. When taken out of the box it is a simple plain jar complete with lid. The lid has a token slot into which cardboard tokens can be posted into. The jar is supplied with a jar wrap which has a printed side and a plain side and can be coloured in and decorated with the supplied stickers and can then be stuck onto the jar to give it your own look.
The kids soon got to work. They spent about an hour each decorating and colouring the jar wrap to stick on to the jar (should they wish, they could use the reverse of the wrap and use it to create their own unique designs). Once completed, we wrapped it around the jar and taped it on. Now both had a better-looking jar, with their own personal stamp on it, to keep all their precious childhood memories in.
The Star Jarz are supplied with 40 cardboard tokens that have writing prompts on them; 20 that are already coloured in with messages such as “Today I’m happy because…” and “Special Event May” and 20 that need colouring in or decorating and have pictures such as hearts and messages such as “Today was fun because …”, giving prompts to write short messages and messages on the rear of each card. When the token is finished it is popped through the slot on the lid. Now usually the tokens would drop to the bottom and the job is done, but with the Star Jarz there is an added bonus for the children in that when a token is pushed through the slot the jar lights up in rainbow colours. The kids thought this was an excellent feature. They now want to add memories to their jars at bedtime as it will be darker and they can get the best effects of the lighting when dropping in their memory tokens. The jar lid can be unscrewed at all time so they can always go back and look at their memories.
The jars are even supplied with a 24 page activity booklet to help create more memories or even help you find out more about your friends and family, all of which can be removed from the book and placed in the jar for safe keeping (unfortunately, these can’t be posted through the slot on the lid, the lid will have to be unscrewed to place them in).
The Star Jars from John Adams are an excellent boredom busting craft activity that will encourage creativity and writing skills as well as helping children record and keep their precious memories safe to go back and reminisce over in the future. The kids love them.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £13 each (suitable for age 6 years +)
For more information, visit www.johnadams.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
