Braving the world of SLIME

Are you worried about braving the world of slime with your kids? Here’s how another mom and I managed it!

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I’ve never pretended that I like messy crafts. I’ve never pretended that I like getting my hands icky and sticky. So why on earth would I make some slime? Well, mainly to see if my son would like it! I was very grateful to be able to share this experience with the fabulous Laura from Lalymom. She made some bubble dough and you can read about her version of events here.

There are so many slime/goop/ooblek/flubber recipes around that I even started a Pinterest board to keep track of them! But I decided to start with one from Frugal Fun 4 Boys which needs equal parts clear glue and liquid starch, plus a bit of food colouring. Liquid starch can be purchased in some grocery stores but I ordered mine from Amazon.

So here’s the basic recipe that I used:

5 fl oz clear glue
3-4 fl oz liquid starch
2-3 drops food colouring

First I made some purple slime. Wow – this is WEIRD stuff. I stirred it all together and very quickly it started to clump together.

Once it all held together I tipped it onto a mat and started pulling, poking and stretching. Very very strange!

But I got so carried away I used another bottle of glue to make some blue slime too!

I kept the slime in separate resealable bags until our playdate the next morning. Overnight it had all smoothed out and wasn’t lumpy at all. We put the slime into containers outside. Laura’s daughter Ladybug (3yrs) was cautious at first with the slime, but she liked the way it squished and made some cute handprints.

Then we showed her how gloopy it was if you hold it up. That’s when it got really interesting!

Before long the two colours had merged but it looked even better!

We tried to recreate the amazing photo from The Chocolate Muffin Tree showing slime oozing through a tennis racket. But our slime just wasn’t oozy enough. However, we left it out in the sun for a while and it was perfect! SO much fun!

After we had finished playing Laura packed up the slime into bags. Her son Little Big Man (10m) had been napping earlier and missed out on the fun – but now he got to play too!

Don’t forget to head over to LalyMom and check out the bubble dough that she made! It was a really intriguing texture: mouldable, pliable, but somehow soft and crumbly too.

Update: Since our first slime experience we’ve played with it a LOT more. Check out my How to Make Slime Video: