So, like most people, when I find something I like, I tend to stick with it. A great example of this is our "gloop" aka "slime" recipe. We have a great recipe, the children love it, it is fun and easy to make and we use it all the time. I have been told that I NEED to try another recipe even if it is just for the dramatic effect of making it and seeing the instant change when the chemical reaction happens. So, today.... we decided to have a slime off....
Today's contestants are:
Blue Gloop. You can actually make this in any color you would like. We made our slimes in different colors for easy identification. You can find the recipe for this here. This is our tried and true, we use it every time recipe.
In the other corner is "GAK" or "Slime" made with Borax. The recipe is all over the web. We followed the tutorial here. For this option, we decided to use green food coloring (with a drop of yellow to make it extra bright).
(Did you notice we used crystal light containers to hold our ingredients. I made them into measuring cups by drawing lines with permanent markers on them.)We gave the children plenty of time to play with each type. Then we tried a couple of tests.
The first test was a pull test: What happens when you try to pull it apart?
We found that the green slime was very easy to pull into pieces.
The blue slime took much more effort and muscle to pull apart, it likes to stretch.Then we tried a roll test (deemed to be the "snake" test by the children ): What happens when you roll your hands over the top of it? Can you make a long snake?
The blue slime seemed to roll forever, getting thinner and thinner with each roll..
The green slime didn't pass the snake test.... It actually broke into more tiny pieces each time you rolled your hands over it.
The children will continue to explore these two recipes. Perhaps our working knowledge of the green slime is too new.... and we need a little bit more practice with it? It sure is fun to break into pieces and recollect.
Most of the children have said that so far, they like the blue slime better, but they like the color of the green one best. We will keep playing and experimenting.
I shared this post at ABC & 123
Now... if you thought that was fun, jump ahead a couple of days to Thursday... where we made our own floam!
Do you have a great slime recipe that we can add to our slime off??? If you do, PLEASE link it up below! I have also been collecting new play dough recipes, so we will be testing some of those out in the near future as well!
Comments
http://www.playbasedlearning.com.au/2009/11/slippery-slime/
We call it slime and it is made from a soap product called 'Lux Flakes' which is just flakes of pure soap. You mix it with water and if it sits over night it thickens up and becomes incredibly slimy. It's SO slimy when you clean it up it tends to slime around on the table but as it's just soap it cleans at the same time.
Donna :) :)
Even though I know that, we rarely get into messy stuff here, except maybe baking :) We've done our own playdough, maybe should try the goo next.
1/2 T toothpaste (creamy, not gel)
1 T. white glue
2T cornstarch
1/2 T water
The mixture was way too gooey the first time I made it. Luckily we forgot to add the glue the 2nd time and it turned out pretty good, a little looser than Silly Putty but not sticky. However, we did have to tweek the amount of water so it wouldn't be too gooey. And it smelled minty!
thanks for linking up today at The HSV!
~Jennifer
I'm trying to think if we have any containers that are similar to Crystal Light that I could use for this. I just don't drink Crystal Light at all.