I am on a roll with this whole “messy play” thing. You see, I hate messy play, but I am slowly getting over it all in my older age. My kids are enjoying my newfound attitude about the mess.
Recently we gave the famous Oobleck a try. It’s been around since I can remember, the basic recipe is the one with cornstarch and water, but there are many others out there that produce a more slime-like result. We have those on our list to make soon!
We used 2 cups cornstarch and 1 cup water to begin with. I made 2 separate dishes, one for Ladybug and one for Krash. They enjoyed the basic recipe for quite awhile before we twisted things up one by one.
Our first addition was food coloring, Ladybug chose pink and Krash chose blue. After they got it all mixed in, we did some color mixing! I added a blue drop to hers and we watched it become purple!
One of the fun things was to see how when moving our hands slowly through it, they would move freely and easier. When we tried to move our hands quickly, it got firm and was difficult. To illustrate this further, I gave each of the kids a small animal to experiment with.
We then added water beads! We had a batch that was about 2 weeks old, and we added a handful!
Then, towards the end, we added some shaving cream just to see what it would do to the mixture! By this time Pac had joined us, those are his hands!
It made the mixture more foamy & puffy, she loved it!
Over an hour later, the girl was still going strong after both boys had moved on.
By this time she had named it her “swamp.”
She took over both bowls and continued playing for a total of almost 2 hours!
By the end it was a sloppy mess and she loved it! The mixture itself changed a lot with the addition of shaving cream and the broken up water beads {they squished some of them apart}.
In the end, my entire island was covered in the gooey mess, but that’s OK. It all came clean and we had fun! Even my hands were stained pink from playing with them!
I am glad God is allowing me to get over my mess-phobia, we are having a lot of fun and I know this kind of play is awesome for my sensory seeking girly. She absolutely loves messy play, beyond how either of the boys ever were. They are enjoying messy play now more than they ever have, I think their sister is inspiring them!
See more of our Messy Play & Sensory Fun ideas here!
See our guest post from John Bowman, author of Montessori at Home!, all about sensory experiences here!
Stay tuned to see what we did with the leftover mixture! Hint-we didn’t throw it out!