Todays fun child craft/activity was making Flubber. It goes by other names too, some call it Gak. You can find recipes for it all over the internet. It's a simple process, takes minimal time, and creates minimal mess.
Ingredients:
Water
Elmers Glue
Borax
Food coloring
Step 1. Take 3/4 cup room temp water and mix with 1 cup of glue. Add food coloring here if you want color.
(I'm glad I had extra glue on hand because I thought one was enough and I found out that each bottle only has about 1 cup. So figure on using about 2 average size school bottles.)
Step 2. In a separate container mix 1/3 cup hot water and 1 tsp Borax.
(There are all sorts of questions about safety of borax. Please have an adult handle the Borax powder and do the initial mixing of Borax and hot water. Once the ingredients are combined there is no inherent danger for children.)
Step 3. Combine glue mixture and borax mixture into a bowl and start stirring. It will glob up very quickly. This is fun for kids to see or experience first hand while stirring.
(make sure you use a disposable or non-food bowl. This can make the bowl rather sticky and a challenge to clean.) When there is little or no water sitting on bottom of the bowl you are done.
Step 4. Remove and start playing.
At this point you can pull out the flubber and start playing!
Mush, squish, pull, press, tear, strech.......
Although this leaves little or no residue on the table I put a sheet of wax paper to make sure that it didn't pick up any dirt from the picnic table. And after playing with anything it is always good to have kids wash their hands.
Do you have a favorite summer experiment/activity for your kids in the summer time?
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