Every September the same thing happens. A new bottle goes into a new bag, and by half term it is either lost, leaking, or living at the bottom of the lost property box with someone else's name on it. By Christmas you have bought two more.
This is a guide to what actually survives a school year, written from the practical end rather than the marketing end. Some of it applies to any bottle you buy. Some of it is specific to what we make.
The four ways a school bottle fails
Almost every bottle that gets replaced mid-year fails in one of four ways, and they are worth knowing before you choose.
It leaks in the bag. Usually a lid problem rather than a bottle problem. Push-button sports caps and flip straws have more moving parts and more seals, and each seal is somewhere a leak can start once it has been dropped a few times. A simple screw lid has one seal and no mechanism.
It smells. Squash, juice and milky drinks leave residue in threads, straws and any narrow channel. A bottle that cannot be got into properly with a brush will start to taste of last week by about October.
The name comes off. This is the one people underestimate. A sticky label survives a few washes. A stick-on name lifts at the corner, catches on something in the bag, and peels. Once the name is gone the bottle is anonymous, and an anonymous bottle in a classroom of thirty is a bottle you have lost.
It does not fit anything. A bottle that will not go in the side pocket has to travel inside the bag, where it lies on top of a reading book and where a leak becomes a much bigger problem.
Insulated or not?
Single-wall plastic bottles are light and cheap, and for a child who drinks water at room temperature they are perfectly adequate. Two things go against them: they sweat in a warm bag, so the inside of the rucksack gets damp, and by the afternoon the water is the temperature of the classroom.
Double-wall insulated bottles hold their temperature through the day and do not sweat, because the outer wall never gets cold. They are heavier — that is the honest trade-off — and they cost more. For a child who will only drink water when it is actually cold, that trade is usually worth making. For a child who drinks anything put in front of them, it may not be.
Our personalised 600 ml water bottle is double-wall insulated aluminium, which is the version we make because it is the one that gets used in the afternoon as well as the morning.
What size actually works
600 ml is the size that suits most primary and early secondary children. It is enough for a school day without being refilled at every break, and it is short enough to sit in a rucksack side pocket rather than having to travel inside the bag.
Bigger is not automatically better here. A litre bottle holds more water and also weighs a kilo when full, which is a lot to hang off a small shoulder alongside a lunch bag and a book bag. It is also more likely to be left behind precisely because it is heavy.
The side-pocket test is worth doing before you buy anything: take the bag your child actually uses, and check the bottle you are considering will go in the pocket and stay in it when the bag is picked up by one strap. That is how bags are picked up.
The name is the point
A printed name is not decoration on a school bottle. It is the entire reason the bottle comes home.
There is a difference worth understanding between a name that is on a bottle and a name that is in it. Stickers, iron-on labels and applied lettering sit on top of the surface: there is an edge, the edge catches, and the name peels. On our bottles the design is printed into the bottle's coated finish, so there is no raised layer and no edge to lift. It goes through a school bag for a year and it is still there.
Two pieces of practical advice on what to print:
Print the name they answer to. If your child is Alexander on the register and Alfie in the playground, print Alfie. The bottle needs to be identifiable by a seven-year-old and by a teaching assistant who has never seen the register, not by the school office.
Keep it bold and short. A first name in a bold font reads across a classroom. A full name in a delicate script reads at arm's length, which is not the distance at which lost property is sorted.
You choose from six font styles — Script, Serif, Block, Display, Mono or Hand — and your own text colour. For a young child, Block is usually the right answer even if it is not the prettiest one.
Surnames, safety and what to leave off
A lot of parents ask whether to include a surname. The honest answer is that it depends on your school and your own judgement, and there is a reasonable case both ways.
A first name alone identifies the bottle inside a classroom, which is where it will be lost most of the time. A full name helps if the bottle travels further — a school trip, a swimming pool, a club. What most people settle on is a first name plus a surname initial, which is enough to distinguish two children with the same first name without printing a child's full identity on something they carry in public.
What we would leave off entirely: your address, your phone number, and your child's school year or class. A class changes every September and the bottle does not.
Cleaning it so it lasts
Most bottles that get thrown away are not broken. They smell.
The routine that prevents it is dull and takes thirty seconds: empty it the same day it comes home rather than the next morning, rinse it with warm water, and leave it to dry with the lid off. A lid screwed onto a damp bottle overnight is how the smell starts. Once a week, wash it properly with a bottle brush that reaches the bottom.
If it has already gone that way, warm water with a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda left overnight will usually rescue it. If it has had milk in it and been left over a weekend, sometimes it will not, and that is worth knowing before you send a child in with a milky drink.
Avoid abrasive scourers on the printed area. The print is durable, but nothing survives being scrubbed with a wire pad.
Buying for a class or a teacher
Two related things people order alongside these.
A named bottle is a common end-of-term gift for a teaching assistant or a nursery key worker, because it is useful rather than ornamental and it does not join the queue of mugs. There are more ideas along those lines in our personalised teacher gifts collection.
For siblings starting together, matching bottles in different colours of text is easier to police than two identical ones. The personalised kids lunch bag and the kids apron take the same name and the same font, if you want the set to look deliberate.
When to order
Every bottle is printed to order in Cheshire and usually dispatched within one to three working days, with free UK delivery. In the last fortnight of August that becomes the busiest window of our year, so a week's margin before the first day of term is sensible rather than cautious.
One thing worth saying plainly: because the bottle is printed with your child's name, it cannot be returned if the spelling is wrong. Read it back before you check out. A surprising proportion of the corrections we are asked about are a name typed correctly and a nickname the child does not actually use.
The short version
- 600 ml, insulated, screw lid, fits the side pocket of the bag they actually carry.
- A printed name that is part of the surface, not stuck on top of it.
- First name, bold font, in the form the child answers to.
- Emptied and dried with the lid off, the same day.
Do those four and the bottle you buy this September will still be in the bag next July.
Frequently asked questions
What size water bottle suits a primary school child?
600 ml. It lasts a school day without constant refills and is short enough to sit in a rucksack side pocket rather than travelling inside the bag on top of the reading books.
Insulated or single-wall for school?
Double-wall insulated bottles hold their temperature through the day and do not sweat in the bag; the trade-off is weight and price. For a child who only drinks water when it is actually cold, insulated is worth it.
Why does the name come off a school bottle?
Stick-on labels and applied lettering sit on top of the surface, so the edge catches on something in the bag and peels. Our 600 ml bottle has the name printed into the coated finish, so there is no edge to lift.
Related reading: packing a school lunch bag that stays cold.
