Friday, February 13, 2015

Valentine's Day Slime

I don't make slime often. Clearly I need to make it more. I had lots of special activities planned for today, but the tots ended up playing with this Valentine's Day slime for almost two hours. 
TWO HOURS PEOPLE!!

You Will Need:
2 cups clear or glitter glue gel
1.5 cups water

(I used two 6oz bottles of Elmer's red glitter glue plus one 4oz bottle of clear glue gel)

1tsp Borax
1.5 cups warm water

Pour the glue into a large mixing bowl after measuring. Fill glue bottles with warm water and shake well to get the last little bits of glue. Then measure out 1.5 cups water, pour into the glue and stir well to combine. 
At this stage I added the heart confetti and a few drops Cinnamon Leaf essential oil, it smells like red hots candies!! You could add extra food coloring or glitter too. 

In a separate bowl mix 1.5 cups very warm tap water with 3/4 to 1 teaspoon borax. Stir well until completely dissolved. The more borax you use, the thicker the slime will be. 

Pour the borax solution into your glue solution and mix well, stirring fast. The slime will quickly form and be very sticky at this point. Keep mixing until it forms a ball. You may or may not have some water left in the bowl (we didn't this time). 


That's it! Slime is super simple to whip up and super fun to play with. It's not sticky to play with and doesn't need much to go with it. Z Rex was very excited to start playing.

 




He loved squeezing the slime in his hands, feeling it ooze out between his fingers. Great exercise for building fine motor strength. 


Z Rex took his time investigating the physical properties of the slime. Squishing, squeezing, pulling, and stretching to see how the slime would react. I love sitting back quietly at this point during sensory play just to watch his expressions and reactions. 

Look Mama, I can see through it like glass. 



He quickly realized that if he held it up, the slime would slowly ooze down and thin out some. The light shining through was really pretty! We took turns pulling to see how far we could stretch the slime. This always ended in fits of giggles when it finally broke.






Slime is SUPER stretchy!
He did this over and over and over again. 













After about an hour of just playing and exploring the slime, I gave Z Rex a few heart cookie cutters to try out.  When he picked it up there is an impression for a few seconds, but it quickly disappears into the ooze. He had fun pressing them into the slime and seeing the slime ooze out around it. 


Overall slime is moving it's way up on the favorite sensory play ideas for Z Rex. He's already asking to play with it again.
There are lots of other recipes for play slime using liquid starch or even  Metamucil. We may try one of those next time to compare. 


1 comment:

  1. That looks like fabulous sensory play! I need to find somewhere that sells Elmers glue and liquid starch here in Scotland! I'm also write about glue and water slime please give me a feedback for this slime making recipe.

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