Homemade Slime

Homemade Slime is something that Emily and Juliette LOVE to make and play with.  We have made this homemade slime recipe with their cousin, for Emily's science themed birthday party and with Emily's Brownie Girl Scout Troop to earn the Home Scientist Badge.  It is so easy to make and so much fun to play with.  

I was so excited when my friend Tracy, from Tracy & Co. (be sure to check out her YouTube Channel!!) asked us if we would like to get together and that she was thinking of making some slime.  I told her I had all the stuff and I knew that Clara and her daughter would have so much fun with it.  

Tracy actually vlogged us making the slime and the girls playing with it so you can watch us in action.

Homemade Slime

(I have seen many different variations of this recipe, this is modified from Steve Spangler)

 You will need: glue, water, food coloring, borax, some measuring cups and spoons, a bowl or cup to mix the slime in and either spoons or popsicle sticks to mix with.

 First, I put 1 part glue (I used about 1/2 cup) in a cup for each girl.  Then I added 1 part water (I used about 1/2 cup) and had them mix that together with their popsicle stick.  Each girl picked a color that they wanted their slime and I added a few drops of food coloring to the cup of glue and water and let them mix it together a little bit more.

While the girls were mixing the glue and water together, I  added 1/2 tsp of borax to 1 cup of water and we mixed it together until it was dissolved.  

Finally, I added about 2 parts of the  borax solution ( I used about 1/2 a cup) to the glue and water mixture and had the girls stir it together.  Almost instantly you can see the slime forming and feel it sticking to the popsicle stick. At this point we just took the slime out of the cup and used our hands to mix it together well.  

This recipe is very forgiving, if you have to much water just pour a little out and if it is not slimy enough just add a little bit more of the borax solution.

Now for the fun part!!!

The girls had fun squishing and pulling and stretching the slime.  Tracy even put out cookie cutters and it was fun to put a glob of the slime in one and watch it spread out as it sat in it.

This slime will last for awhile as long as you keep it stored in a sealed ziplock bag or another airtight container.  

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Birthday Rice Sensory Bin

Clara celebrated her 3rd birthday yesterday and recently she has really enjoyed playing in our sensory bin.  So, I thought is would be fun to surprise her and create a birthday themed sensory bin that she could explore this week for her birthday.

Clara's Cupcake Birthday Rice Sensory Bin

I filled the bin with plain white rice, which is our go to sensory bin filler. Then I added in multi-colored pom poms, a pack of birthday candles, individual silicone cupcake holders (I found these a few years ago in the dollar spot in Target), and finally since she turned 3 some number 3 cookie cutters and foam threes.  There are also an  assortment of spoons and scoopers.

She loved scooping, pouring, filling and decorating in her special birthday themed sensory bin.

Another fun game the girls like to play with the sensory bins is finding all of one type of object.  With this bin I hid all the number threes under the rice and Clara dug around to find them.

Linking up at Everyday Early Childhood where you can also find more great ideas for little kids.

Before you go be sure to check out our other SENSORY BINS.

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Rice Sensory Bin Challenge

My girls love sensory play and our Rice Bin has been one of their favorites since they were pretty young.  I have set up all different themed sensory bins with things that I thought the girls would find fun.  They always seem to enjoy scooping and pouring the rice from one container to the next.  When I found out about this child led Rice Sensory Bin Challenge I couldn’t wait to participate.  The awesome part about this challenge is that it is a child led play project.  All I did was fill one of our Plastic Storage Bins with some plain white rice and the rest was up to Juliette!

Here is what Juliette came up with:

She decided to add some of our Play-Doh toys to her Rice Bin.  This included, plates, a spoon and fork, ice cream cones, an ice cream dish, a whisk, candles and a paint palate.

She spend lots of time scooping and pouring the rice from one cup to the next.

  She also had fun making ice cream sundaes and singing “Happy Birthday!’

After awhile she came up with a Hide and Seek game for us to play.  She would hide one of the pieces under the rice and I had to find it.  Then I hid one of the pieces and she had to find it. 

I loved seeing and listening to her as she played with the rice.  She loved that she was in control of this activity, by picking everything out it was everything that she wanted and I loved that about this project!

For more great Rice Sensory Bin Activities check out these awesome blogs.  Don’t forget we all started with just a bin of plain white or brown rice and our kids did the rest!!!

• Little Bins For Little Hands
• A Mommy's Adventures
• Craftulate
• Creative World of Varya
• FSPDT
• Gift of Curiosity
• Glittering Muffins
• Here Come the Girls
• Kids Play Space
• Lalymom
• Life Over C’s
• Life with Moore Babies
• Minne-Mama
• P is for Preschooler
• Preschool Inspirations
• School Time Snippets
• Squiggles and Bubbles
• Still Playing School
  Suzy Homeschooler
• Teach Beside Me
• Teach me Mommy
  The Chaos and The Clutter

 

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Plastic Easter Egg Sensory Bin

This Easter sensory bin is such a simple idea, yet it has provided HOURS of fun for all three of my girls.  As I have mentioned before we have a HUGE collection of plastic Easter Eggs and I am always looking for new and different ways to use them.  This sensory bin was a spur of the moment attempt to keep Clara (11 months old) occupied while we decorated the house for Easter. I filled our sensory bin, which is just a large under the bed storage bin that I picked up at A.C. Moore, with all of our plastic Easter Eggs and the Bunny Egg Dipper Tongs that we use when we color Easter Eggs.  (I was excited that they get to use that more than once during the season too!)  Later I added an Egg Carton that they enjoyed filling up with eggs. 

Since there are a variety of sizes of eggs Juliette especially liked putting the little egg in the medium egg inside the large egg and surprising Emily with it. 
I thought it was pretty amazing that this bin kept a 7 year old, 4 year old and 11 month old busy and playing with each other.  These pictures make me smile every time I see them!

After a few days Clara discovered that is is also a lot of fun to climb into the sensory bin of eggs!!

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Summer Fun List ~ Outdoor Oobleck

We are having so much fun completing the activities on our Summer Fun List.  I was watching my nephew and he read over our list and said he really wanted to do Outdoor Oobleck with us and that is just what we did.

I originally intended on filling a small baby pool with Oobleck, but I was really not sure how much cornstarch I would need to do that, I got five boxes and figured we could see how much that would make.  Once I got the boxes home I realized that we would need a smaller container for the Oobleck than I thought.   I was happy to find this under the bed storage bin in the shed which worked really well.   It probably could have used a few more boxes, but now we know for next time!

I dumped all 5 boxes into the bin and then added about 2 small buckets of water.  The recipe is 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water.  We also added green food coloring which left all of our hands a lovely tinge of green :0)

Outdoor Oobleck Fun!!!

The kids wore their bathing suits so that they could play in the Oobleck and then rinse it off in the pool.  

I hope to do this again with a few more boxes of cornstarch since we discovered that Oobleck is very relaxing for adults to play with too!

Water Play

Emily and Juliette have been enjoying the beautiful warm weather and loved playing outside in their bathing suits with our Step2 Fun Flow Play Sink (thank you Dad for finding this for us) although the faucet does not work anymore the girls loved washing their dishes and filling up the cups, bowls and teapot.

  Emily liked transferring water from one pot to the next.

My parents gave Emily this  Battat Kitchen Playsetset for Christmas a few years ago and we never opened them since the kitchen set we have came with everything already.  I had the same set when I was younger and loved it.  Now we can use these for outside creating and imaginative play.  My favorite part of this set is the working hand mixer that is next to Emily’s hand (yellow and red)  it is fun to watch it mix up the water.  I love that we have a stash of toys that were never opened or played with that I can use as special surprises throughout the year!

Juliette loved playing with the cups in the sink.  She would fill up the cups and then pour them out. 

I am looking forward to all of the creative outdoor play and fun that the girls will have with these toys during the summer!

Emily and Juliette and the Oobleck

We had so much fun playing with our own Oobleck after reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck, by Dr. Seuss. 

To make Oobleck all you have to do is mix about 2 parts corn starch to 1 part water and then add green food coloring.  For ours I did about 4 cups corn starch and 2 cups water.  I put it in our sensory bin and added a towel underneath.  Although it looks messy, it cleans up with water and a rag really easily! 

**When they were finished playing with it I just set it aside and let the water evaporate.  Then added more water and they were able to play with it again!

Juliette was not so sure about it, but each time I washed her hands she just came back for more!

We added some Little People to cover in Oobleck.  The girls thought this was a lot of fun!

Emily loved having me cover her hands in the Oobleck and then trying to pull them up really fast.

  We had it drip through a slotted spoon for a fun effect.  Juliette liked feeling it fall on her hands and Emily loved watching the stringy Oobleck.

Sensory Fun ~ Packing Peanuts and Pom Poms

I thought it would be fun to make a winter sensory tub and I have been saving some biodegradable packing peanuts for a while now just for this activity!  So I filled our sensory tub with packing peanuts.  Then I added some white and blue pom poms, cotton balls, silver and blue sequins and spangles and white, silver and blue pipe cleaners.  This added some fun colors and textures for the girls to explore!

I also added some blue training chopsticks for the girls to pick the pieces up with.  Then small, medium and large clear plastic containers and our snowflake silicone baking cups for them to fill up. 

Juliette loved putting the packing peanuts in the silicone baking cups.

Emily used the training chopsticks to transfer the pieces into the containers.

Sensory Fun ~ Fall Fabric Leaves, Popcorn and Split Peas

I filled our sensory tub up with a half a bag of popcorn kernels that were in the cabinet for years.  (I bought a fresh bag and couldn’t just through these out.)  I also added a bag of split peas and a bunch of fall fabric leaves and flowers.  I found a bunch of them while I was going through our fall decorations.  I didn’t have a use for them anymore so I thought they would be great for a fall themed sensory tub.

Juliette was able to test it out while Emily was taking a nap.  She loved using the scoop I found at my Grandmother’s house while helping her clean out some cabinets.

   She also liked just feeling the leaves and throwing them around the tub and then the floor.  There was quite a mess once she was finished, but she had a great time doing it!

Pumpkin Carving

After going pumpkin picking we had to carve our pumpkin.  We picked a nice big one to carve and we waited until the week before Halloween to carve it.  This was Emily and Juliette’s first year carving a pumpkin.  Both of the girls and Mommy too, were very excited and had fun helping. 

Emily and Daddy picked out which design we were going to use.

Daddy cut the top off so that we could see what was inside.

Me: Wow what is in there? (Expecting seeds as the answer)

Emily: Spaghetti (In a not so excited tone)

Feeling the inside of the pumpkin

Juliette had to go first because Emily was not so sure about it!

      Emily and Juliette taking turns marking the design.  We used the poker things for a few seconds and then we realized a sharpie marker was much more time efficient!   Mommy and Daddy carving the pumpkin  Emily carving the pumpkin too!

Our Kitty Cat Pumpkin

I love how it turned out!!

  And…

…just for fun Emily shooting fire from her finger!!  A fun Halloween Trick :0)

Frighteningly Frozen Fun

I was inspired to make this fun Halloween Activity after seeing a similar activity on Counting Coconuts.  I knew that Emily and Juliette would enjoy this and when I came across a bag of plastic creepy crawlies and spider rings from last year I knew that they would work perfectly.

First, I gathered all the things that I was going to hide in my block of ice.  I used some mini pumpkin erasers (target dollar spot), plastic bugs and skeletons (dollar tree) and spider and bat rings (dollar tree).  Next I put them in a round baking pan and added some ice cubes and then enough water cover the objects.  Then I put them in the freezer until the whole block thing was frozen.

After dinner the other night I put the block of ice into a shallow tub (mine was my cupcake/cake carrier) along with a bowl of warm water, some pipettes and a salt shaker.  Emily, Juliette and Grandpa got to work excavating the petrified plastic treasures!

Here Emily is focusing on freeing this bat ring and getting an excellent fine motor skills work out.

   Juliette with the ring that Grandpa excavated for her!!

This activity was so much fun and everyone including Grandpa (my dad) enjoyed it.  In fact, I don’t know who had more fun, the girls or Grandpa :0)

Next time, I am going to pre-freeze some colored water ice cubes to add into the mix.  I think it will add some more fun as the colors melt.

 

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Check out other great ideas for Tots and Preschoolers:

Sensory Fun ~ Rice Krispies

Both Emily and Juliette have really enjoyed playing with our newest sensory tub.  This time I filled it with Rice Krispies!  I had a box that has been in the cabinet for longer than I can remember, so instead of throwing them away I added them to our sensory tub with spoons and containers for them to scoop, pour and dump.  I also included rocks that my sister brought for both of the girls from her trip to the Hoover Dam.  Emily loved finding the different colored stones and putting them into the pull string bags.