Slime!

Slime!... or Gak!... or Flubber!... or Goop! or... one of the other millions of names I've heard for this ooey gooey material that is easy to make at home with just a couple of ingredients.  Last Friday I whipped some up for the toddlers in my "Explore the Arts" class and after some slight hesitation, they were on board with the stuff. The amazing thing about this material is that although we are calling it "slime," it actually isn't messy to play with so this is something that can be done without much worry of a mess right at your kitchen table.

Here is what you need:

• Elmer's Glue (8 oz bottle)
• Borax (a powdered soap, sometimes hard to find in grocery stores so here is a link to some you can order online.)
• Large mixing bowl
• Spoon
• Cup
• Measuring cup
• Food coloring
• Water

When I made this I followed these directions pretty loosely, adding things as I saw fit to get the consistency I wanted.

1. Empty the entire bottle of glue into the mixing bowl.  Fill the empty bottle with warm water and shake.  Pour the glue-water mixture into the mixing bowl and stir well with a spoon.
2. Add some food coloring and stir.
3. Into your cup add 1/2 cup of warm water along with a teaspoon of Borax.  Stir until slightly dissolved.
4. While stirring the glue mixture in the bowl, slowly add the water-Borax mixture in your cup.  This will begin to change the glue mixture into something a little bit more rubbery.  Once you have most of the glue mixture moving towards a rubbery state, ditch the spoon and dig in with your hands!
5. Continue mixing with your hands, adding more of the Water-Borax solution to make it more rubbery and more glue to slime it up a bit.
6. Play!
7. Cover, this stuff will dry up when left to the open air. A plastic bag will do the trick.

There are so many fun ways to play with slime with a toddler.  Just exploring with out much intervention at all will keep kids entertained for at least 10 minutes, which can be an impressive amount of time for some of our little ones.  To push this play time a little bit longer I introduced some simple baking tools, rolling pins and cookie cutters.  Another fun thing to do is to hide things inside of the slime for your child to dig out.  Anything from smooth pebbles to small plastic dinosaur toys will work for something like this.  We also played with the slime by stuffing as much of it as we could into little cups (I had some left over play-dough cups from some that had dried out) and were pleasantly surprised at the noise that came out of the cup, "It tooted!" exclaimed one of our toddlers on Friday with bright excited eyes.  And ya, it did, so we all just had to laugh and agree with him on that one.  Keep this slime covered when you are finished it and it should last you for a little while.  A plastic bag will do, but I have seen it stored inside of those plastic Easter eggs which can be added fun if you have a dinosaur hidden inside of your slime.

Enjoy and post any pictures of your slime making to our facebook page facebook.com/SSYARTS