Clogged glue caps are a common issue with school glue — and they’re a pet peeve of many schoolteachers who have to deal with fixing the messy, stuck bottles. Rather than reminding kids over and over to close their glue bottles, there’s an easy, cute and effective technique that will make this simple task more fun for them.
Draw a smiley face on the bottle! The two eyes go on the orange cap and the smile goes on the white cap rim. When you open the cap, you can tell it’s not shut. When you turn it back, you’ll know it’s fully closed when the eyes line up with the smile.
Check out this photo to see what it looks like when the cap is properly closed.
And this is how it looks when it’s open!
When we tried this out, we found it was best to twist the cap farther than normal on first opening it and then close it again. Otherwise, the smile and eyes were misaligned on first use. (Kids tend to over-twist the caps, too.)
Another way to get kids to properly use a glue bottle was suggested by the blogger at Fairy Dust Teaching. She tells her students that the glue bottle is “Mr. Glue.” He has a tongue (the white tip that pokes out of the orange cap when its fully closed), neck (the white rim below the orange cap), and tummy (the glue bottle itself). She tells students to gently squeeze Mr. Glue’s tummy to add just a drop off a glue and has a little rhyme to explain how not to squeeze out to much.
If you’re already facing clogged glue caps after bottles weren’t fully closed, you can take the orange cap off completely and soak it in vegetable oil. Real Simple also suggests submerging the bottle in hot water for a bit or using nail polish remover on the clogged cap.
Would you use any of these glue tips to get out of a sticky situation?
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.
