Preschool Art | Make Colored Rice

By Rachelle

After seeing so much lovely colored rice all over my Pinterest feed for ages, it was high time that we created our own colorful rice. And you, too, can make your own colored rice for an afternoon of sensory play or for filling clear jars with layers of rainbow rice like you see here.

Why Colored Rice is Worth Making

It’s a natural play material
Kids love the sensory experience of sifting it through their hands
It’s economical
The supplies probably already live in your pantry
Kids can help make it
It can last a looooong time

Supplies for Colored Rice

White or Brown Rice
Vinegar
Food Coloring
Zip-up plastic bags or bowls and spoon for mixing the colors

TinkerLab tips

Can we use brown rice?

We used brown rice for this activity, and the colors are still vibrant.

What’s the rice : vinegar ratio?

For each color that we made, we used 1 cup of rice and 1 teaspoon of vinegar. That’s the ratio that you’ll want to work with (or experiment — we encourage that too!).

But rice is Food!!

If you’re concerned about wasting food, check your pantry for old rice. That’s what we did, and low-and-behold, we had a bag that expired last year. Eeep. I wish we hadn’t missed the expiration date, but at least we could put that rice to good use!

Will my kids actually enjoy this?

Yes, I bet they will! I try to get my own kids involved in all the steps of our projects, and they enjoyed everything from this ro-sham-bo face-off to decide who would make which color of rice to finally playing with their colorful creation.

If you’d like to make this recipe, simply click ‘Print” and you can save this in your recipe file.

Preschool Art | Make Colored Rice

Rating 5.0 from 1 reviews

Prep time: 10 mins

Making time: 24 hours

Total time: 24 hours 10 mins

Make your own colored rice for sensory play or art-making. This recipe makes one cup of colorful rice. Add more rice for more colors.

Supplies

1 cup White or Brown Rice
1 teaspoon Vinegar
⅛ + teaspoon Food Coloring
Zip-up plastic bags or bowls and spoon for mixing the colors

Steps

Fill a zip-up bag with 1 cup of rice and 1 teaspoon of vinegar.
Scoop or pour about ⅛ teaspoon food coloring into the bag.
Zip the bag shut
Squeeze the bag and mix the rice all around until the food coloring is well distributed
Add more food coloring to reach the desired color.
Pour the colored rice onto a cookie sheet. Spread it out to expedite drying time. To absorb the moisture and help the rice dry more quickly, line the tray with a paper towel or towel.
The rice take between 2 hours and a full day to dry, depending on your climate and humidity.

How to Make Colored Rice

Fill each zip-up bag with 1 cup of rice and 1 teaspoon of vinegar.
Scoop or pour about 1/8 teaspoon food coloring into the bag.
Zip the bag shut

Squeeze the bag and mix the rice all around until the food coloring is well distributed
Pour the colored rice onto a cookie sheet. To absorb the moisture and help the rice dry more quickly, line the tray with a paper towel or towel.

We ran out of cookie sheets, so we divided one in half by pulling a paper towel wall up between two colors. Our rice dried in about 5 hours. The rice will dry take up to 24 hours to dry, depending on your climate and humidity.

More Colored Rice

Check back tomorrow and we’ll share a Creative Table set-up using colored rice!

This recipe was inspired by Rainbow Rice via Happy Hooligans

Make a Fall-themed rice sensory bin, via Kids Activities Blog

Side-by-side comparison of dying rice with food coloring and liquid watercolors, via Fun at Home with Kids

Our Favorite Homemade Paint Recipes

By Rachelle

Have you ever made your own paint?

6 Favorite Homemade Paint Recipes for Kids | TinekerLab.com

If not, these homemade paint recipes are just the thing to get you started. You’ll be surprised at just how easy, fast, and affordable making your own paint can be.

Here are some of the reasons that we love to make our own homemade paint:

It’s just plain fun to make things that you’d otherwise buy in the store.
It can save you money.
It can give you peace of mind to know that the ingredients in homemade paints are child-friendly.
Making their own art materials teaches children to be resourceful and inventive.
It could save you a trip to the art store.

Here are six of our favorite homemade paint recipes:

Puffy Sparkle Paint: Made from salt, flour, and water, this paint dries a little puffy and gets a bit of sparkle from the salt. Fill an empty glue bottle with this paint, and squeeze designs onto paper.

Finger Paint: A simple recipe of flour and water, heated over the stove, this goopy paint feels great on the hands.

Egg Tempera Paint: This very easy paint, made from egg yolks, dries with a beautiful sheen can also be a great lesson in how the Renaissance painters originally painted.

Microwave Puffy Paint: Squeeze this paint onto paper and then pop the artwork in the microwave for a truly puffy result. Very cool!

Sweetened Condensed Milk Paint: This may be the most delicious paint recipe yet!

Invisible Ink: Made from citrus juice, this is a fun one for little sleuths and spies.

Bubble Paint: A mixture of dish soap, water, and tempera paint makes this magical solution that can be used to form bubbles on the surface of paper.

6 Favorite Homemade Paint Recipes for Kids | TinekerLab.com

More Homemade Art Materials

Jean Van’t Hul of The Artful Parent created this fantastic resource of 35 Homemade Art Materials Kids Can Make.

If you’re looking for a homemade paint recipe that’s not on this list, please add it in the comments and we will work hard to bring you what you’re looking for!

Make Your Own Birthday Cake

By Rachelle

If you know a little bit about me and my parenting philosophy, you’ll know that I welcome opportunities to get my children into DIY mode. The only way they’re going to learn how to do something is by getting involved, so I may give them a few pointers and then I’ll step back and let them take the lead.

My youngest, R, who I sometimes refer to here as Baby Rainbow, is no longer a baby. Sniff. She just turned two! When we’d ask her what she wanted for her birthday, her response was consistently “vanilla cake.”

Not only do I also drool over vanilla cake, but this simple request made for a totally low-key, low-stress birthday that I look forward to repeating again with future birthdays.

Baking Cakes

To get started, my 4-year old, N, and I mixed up one box of vanilla cake mix from Trader Joes. It doesn’t get easier than that, and the ingredients are actually fairly healthy.

We pulled out our rotary hand mixer/egg beater, which my daughter uses any chance she can get. Not only is it fun for kids to use, but it gets them involved in the kitchen and it does wonders for developing hand-eye coordination and motor skills.

kids use rotary mixer

After she mixed the batter up, we divided it into two 9-inch cake pans and cooked as directed on the box.

Meanwhile, we mixed a batch of our favorite frosting: Buttercream Frosting. Oh-my-goodness. If you’ve never made it before, it’s not only easy, but it’s also highly addictive. Yum.

My kids are always promised a beater to lick at the end of baking, which helps keep hands out of the bowl while we’re assembling.

Once the cakes cooked and cooled, we popped them out of the pans and started in on our grand assembly plan.

Cake Recipes

My 2-year old’s request: Vanilla Cake

My 4-year old’s plan: Two-tiered vanilla cake with vanilla frosting and strawberries in the middle layers. The top will be covered with sprinkles, Happy Birthday letters, a “2” birthday candle, and fairy cupcake toppers (basically, everything we had in the cabinet).

Decorating Step 1: The kids used butter knives to cover the bottom layer with raspberry jam (this was my suggestion, and they did not protest). Then we added a thick layer of vanilla frosting.

kids decorate cake

Frosting for Cake

Decorating Step 2: My 4-year old thinly sliced the strawberries and the kids layered them on the cake.

frosting cake with kids

We placed the second cake on top of the strawberry layer, and then covered the whole thing with frosting. When you’re working with children, it helps to value the process over the product. You can’t worry too much about how the cake is going to look. It’s a bonus, of course, if it looks amazing, but the important thing is that they have take pride in make something amazing happen.

We started gussying the cake up and R requested jelly beans. There were only six left in the box, and she eagerly plunked them into a corner of the cake. This ended up being her piece!

kids bake in the kitchen

And when we were done, they got the frosting bowl as a bonus.

Experiments

For more of our kid-led cooking experiments: How to Invent a Recipe with Kids, Cooking with Toddlers, Cooking with Kids (exploring butter and rosemary)

Also, one of my friends and favorite bloggers, Jean Van’t Hul of The Artful Parent recently wrote about a birthday cake her daughter made: A Kid Made Birthday Cake. I think my kids would feel right at home in her house!

DO YOU LIKE TO COOK WITH YOUR CHILD? WHAT ARE YOU FAVORITE COOKING-WITH-KIDS RECIPES?

How to Make Paper with Preschoolers

By Rachelle

Making paper with kids is a rewarding experience, and today I’m going to share how to make paper with preschoolers (and older kids, too!).

Making paper with kids - so easy! Have you ever made your own paper? It requires some patience and preparation, but it’s not tricky and the process is worth exploring with children or anyone who’s curious about how to make paper.

After my toddler created a sensory bin full of paper and water, I saw an opportunity to upcycle that mushy paper pulp into some new-to-us paper. We had most of the materials handy, but had to make a trip to the hardware store to buy a small window screen (affiliate)

The hardware store happens to be across the street from an ice cream parlor, so my kids were okay with that.

Two ice cream cones later, we returned home, put my youngest down for a nap, and got busy with some paper-making.

To get into the spirit and expand our knowledge of paper making, we watched a Mr. Roger’s episode about paper making. If you like this video you’ll also love learning about how crayons are made. Alternatively, here’s the video-free step-by-step (all from PBS Kids).

how to make paper with kids

Let’s start with the materials (full printable recipe at the end of this post):

How to make paper with kids | TinkerLab

Supplies: Make Your Own Paper

Window Screen. This sliding window screen (affiliate) is economical and reusable.
Two Plastic Wash Tubs (affiliate) or similar
Washcloth/rag/burp cloth/large piece of felt
Water
Torn paper from newspaper, tissue paper, magazines, etc. Be sure that it’s staple and tape-free
Blender (affiliate). <<This is my favorite economical workhorse machine.
Small seeds (optional)

Instructions: Homemade Paper with Kids

Tear the paper into tiny strips, about 2″.
Place your window screen on top of one of the plastic tubs
Place your window screen on top of one of the plastic tubs
Add paper to the blender, cover it with water, and run the blender on a low speed. Since you will squeeze all the water out of the paper pulp, you can’t really have too much water. If the blender doesn’t move easily, add more water.
Run the blender a little bit faster until you get the paper mixture into a nice, smooth pulp. Ours is kind of chunky because my kids wanted it that way. Yours can be smoother.
Spread the pulp thinly and uniformly across the screen and then layer a cloth diaper or towel on top to absorb the extra water, while also pushing the water through the screen into the tub. Get the kids involved.
Place one hand firmly on top of the cloth while you flip the screen over onto a table or countertop that can handle water.
Remove the screen and put the cloth with paper pulp in a spot where it can dry, undisturbed, for about a day. The thicker the paper, the longer it will take to dry.

Mixing paper with water

Setting up our rig Make paper with a blender

In the blender it goes!

My toddler wanted to play with the pulp right away. She squeezed it, scooped it, and carried bowls full of pulp into the living room. It’s so fun and a rich sensory experience, so leave time for this if you have a little one.

Pressing the pulp down and squeezing out the water

Drying our paper

Make paper with a screen

Later the next day, this is what it looked like. Not your typical paper, but beautiful nonetheless. We haven’t done much with it yet, but I’m thinking some Sharpies or watercolor paint might be a good fit. And with the seeds embedded in the pulp, we could cut these up and give them away to friends, with the invitation to plant them in their gardens.

How to Make Paper with Kids

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Making paper teaches children how one of our most ubiquitous materials -- PAPER -- is made, and it's also a fun sensory project for kids of all ages.

Supplies

Screen (we bought a $10 sliding window screen)
Large Tub
Washcloth/rag/burp cloth/large piece of felt
Water
Torn paper from newspaper, tissue paper, magazines, etc. Be sure that it's staple and tape-free
Blender
Small seeds (optional)

Steps

Shred the paper up into little pieces (roughly 2" square)
Add paper to the blender, cover it with water, and run the blender on a low speed. Since you'll squeeze all the water out of the paper pulp, you can't really have too much water, so if the blender doesn't move easily, add more water.
Run the blender a little bit faster until you get the paper mixture into a nice, smooth pulp. Add more water if your pulp is still chunky.
Spread the pulp in a thin and uniform layer across the screen
Cover this with a rag or cloth diape to absorb the extra water, while also pushing the water through the screen into the tub.
Place one hand firmly on top of the cloth and then flip the screen over onto a work surface.
Removed the screen and put the cloth plus paper pulp in a spot where it could dry, undisturbed, for about a day. The thicker the paper, the longer it will take to dry.

More Handmade Paper Inspiration

Allison of No Time for Flashcards used and Immersion Blender to make Recycled Paper Hearts.

Jen of PaintCutPaste made Handmade Blooming Paper.

Rebekah of The Golden Gleam made Recycled Paper Ornaments for Christmas, but you could easily make these with ornaments of just about any shape.

Kristi of Creative Connections for Kids made Wildflower Paper Ornaments (using the same screen as us!).

Melitza of Play Activities made Earth Day Seeded Paper.

How to make paper with preschoolers

5 Easy Steps to Invent a Recipe with Kids

By Rachelle

Do you like to cooking with kids or do you yearn to cook with your child? Today we’re sharing five easy steps to invent a recipe with kids, which will get you into a creative cooking mindset. Think Master Chef + little kids = a fun afternoon.

But you might wonder, “why would I want to invent a recipe when I can easily follow a recipe?” The answer is that inventing recipes instills children with confidence to invent their own solutions to a problem, encourages independent thinking and problem solving skills, and teaches children how to find their way around a kitchen.

My house smells like pancakes.

Which really means that it smells like cooking oil and caramelized sugar. Sort of a happy, greasy smell that has lingered for days.

Every afternoon, for the past three days, my 3 year old turns into a kitchen alchemist as she gathers ingredients and invents her own recipes.

She is in heaven. And it gets even better once we cook the cakes up and proudly serve them up to hungry family members.

Do you ever give your kids free reign over your kitchen?

Experiments like this set children up with a real-life science experiment that fosters creativity, inventiveness, and problem-solving skills. It’s not for the faint of heart and you have to be okay with a bit of a mess, but I think the trouble is well worth it for the amount of creative confidence it builds in children.

So, after three straight days of wild pancake combinations, I present five lessons learned on how to invent recipes with kids…

Cooking with Kids: Invent a Recipe

Lesson #1…Get Familiar with the Kitchen.

If your child doesn’t know where things are, give him a little tour. And start with a simple cooking project that introduces him to some key ingredients and tools for a favorite recipe (such as a mixing bowl, mixing spoon, measuring spoon/cup, flour, and oil).

We spend a lot of time cooking together and my oldest (N) knows her way around the kitchen. She can find the biggest mixing bowl in the house, all the baking ingredients are at kid-level (this will no doubt pose a problem once her little sister figures this out), and we have amazing little foldable step stools like these that give her access to the fridge (unless she wants the butter…but we do have a taller stool for that).

Lesson #2…Come up with a General Plan.

In our case, N has been making pancakes, pancakes, and more pancakes. We tend to make a lot of pancakes in our house anyway (they’re not just for the weekends), so she’s super-familiar with the key ingredients and general direction of what might taste good together. For example, she didn’t pour ketchup into the batter (although if she did, I probably would have let it happen).

Do you have a favorite family recipe that you could riff off of?

To start, she collected a few ingredients (white flour, wheat flour, flax seeds, and blueberries), and added them to the bowl. I tried to step back and allow her to make decisions about quantities, but every now and then I’d throw out a suggestion to help guide the journey.

As you can imagine, her pancake recipe has WAY more than the usual tablespoon of sugar (see the next picture), but it turns out that sugary pancakes are absolutely delicious.

Lesson #3…Green Light all Ingredients.

Of course you want to be safe about this, as things like raw meat and raw eggs need special handling, but try to keep an open mind as your child selects her ingredients. One of N’s batters had chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, mango juice, dried cranberries and walnuts in it. It was amazing.

The most recent batch contained raspberries, strawberry cream cheese, diced apples, and goat cheese. It was a bit chunky, and I’m not so sure about the goat cheese, but we drafted a recipe in case they end up being the best one yet.

Which bring me to the next lesson…

Lesson #4…Write the Recipe Down.

This is validating and makes the whole game so much more fun. As N added ingredients, I tried my best to write them down. Some things were carefully measured and others weren’t, but it didn’t really matter. I’m thrilled to have documentation of her first recipes and I’m sure she’ll treasure them as she gets older.

Lesson #5…Embrace a Good Experiment.

As we cooked, I repeated multiple times that this is a grand experiment and that we’d be surprised one way or the other. We chatted about how it’s possible that not one person has ever made this exact recipe, and that chefs go through a similar process when they invent something new. Like scientists, they hypothesize (what ingredients might taste good together?), they experiment (let’s make this batter with yogurt and the next with sour cream), and they test (how does it taste? which batch do we like better? why?).

After one of our cooking sessions, my husband took the kids off on a run in the stroller. These two hot cakes were eaten before they left the driveway, which I suppose speaks to how delicious they came out.

Gluten-free Cloud Dough

By Rachelle

How to Make Gluten-Free Cloud Dough

Gluten-free Cloud Dough

After I posted our Cloud Dough recipe last week, Amy from Kids in the Studio wanted to know if it could be adapted into a gluten-free cloud dough recipe. What a good question!

This isn’t the first question I’ve received about gluten-free recipes since starting this blog, and I realized that I should be more thoughtful about sharing information that can help parents and caregivers provide rich learning experiences for their children. The original recipe is simply a combination of 8:1 flour to oil, so in the spirit of experimentation, I thought we’d replace flour with rice flour and see what would happen.

Gluten-free Cloud Dough Recipe

8 cups rice flour
1 cup vegetable oil
A few drops of Lavender oil (optional)

Mix the rice flour and oil together in a big bowl until the oil integrates into the flour. Add a few drops of lavender oil (or other favorite scent) to give your dough a yummy scent. Place the dough in a big high-walled tray or bin. Children can play with the dough with just their hands, or add scoopers, mixers, and small pots.

If you haven’t bought rice flour before, it’s not inexpensive, and I can see why Amy asked the question! I mixed 2 cups of organic rice flour with 1/4 cup vegetable oil until the oil integrated into the flour, and then shook a few drops of lavender oil into the dough to give it a soothing smell. So far, the main difference I could see is that the rice flour made for a slightly grittier dough, but otherwise it was lovely. The real test would be my kids. I put it in front of my 14 month old, and you can see that she was in sensory heaven. My 3 year old wanted to join in, enjoyed it, and never commented on a weird texture of the dough. As far as I could tell, she didn’t know the difference.

If you make this gluten-free cloud dough, I’d love to hear from you. And if you have a favorite gluten-free recipe to share, please add a link or recipe in the comments.

Experiment with Gluten-Free Cloud Dough

If you don’t have access to rice flour or if you feel like experimenting, try the same ratio of flour to oil with garbanzo flour, gluten-free baking flour, corn flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, or arrowroot starch.
Change the ratio of flour to oil and see what happens, as the suggested flours and starches (above) will combine differently with the oil.

More Play Doughs

If gluten-free dough doesn’t concern you, here are more dough recipes to try:

This recipe for the BEST play dough.

Non-gluten-free cloud dough.

Glow-in-the-dark play dough

Cloud Dough Recipe

By Rachelle

How to Make Cloud Dough

Cloud Dough…Have you heard of it? It turns out that cloud dough is one of the easiest sensory bin recipes around, and it is so rewarding to play with. Even adults will love it. One caveat: it can be messy, so take it outdoors if this is a concern.

Me either, and I thought I’ve heard of most everything arts+little kids related. Karen at Flight of Whimsy introduced me to the recipe, and as soon as I learned about it I knew my 3 year old would love it. The consistency of the dough is lovely to feel and hold. It can be powdery like flour one moment, and then moldable like damp sand the next. This brought HOURS of fun to my home, and maybe it’ll do the same for yours.

Be sure to scroll down for the printable recipe!

We started off with 4 cups of Flour and 1/2 cup of Oil. The original recipe is an 8:1 ratio. I would have enjoyed having the full 8 cups worth, but I didn’t want to deplete my flour reserves, just in case.

Don’t worry about writing all this down. There’s a printable recipe at the end of this post!

Watch the video

N took the mountain-making and oil mixing job very seriously. We mixed it with our hands for about 5 minutes until the dough held together when we squeezed it. We could still see some oil lumps in the dough, but it didn’t have an adverse effect on the material. The original recipe called for baby oil, but canola worked beautifully for us. However, Karen did mention the lovely smell of the baby oil, so we added a healthy dose of lavender oil drops (found at our health food store) to scent the dough. Heavenly!

How to Play with Cloud Dough

I find it fascinating to sit back and observe how my kids explore new-to-them materials. The first thing N made was a wall. A really strong wall.

Then she crafted the dough into a bakery and soup cafe. These silicone molds are wondrous for activities like this.

She enjoyed picking up and squeezing small handfuls of dough. The texture was phenomenal.

The next day we brought it back out and shared the dough with some friends. And this is where I wished I had made the full 8-cup recipe. Hoarders!! There was so much scrambling for all the dough scraps, and I found myself patrolling more than I like to. So, if you’re making a batch for more than one child, 8 cups of flour + 1 cup of oil may be the way to go.

Cloud Dough Recipe

Cloud Dough

Rating 5.0 from 4 reviews

The consistency of this dough is lovely to feel and hold. It can be powdery like flour one moment, and then moldable like damp sand the next. This brought HOURS of fun to my home, and maybe it'll do the same for yours...

Supplies

8 cups flour
1 cup vegetable oil
Essential oil such as lavender or grapefruit (optional)

Steps

Scoop and pour the flour into the center of a large tub.
Create a crater in the middle of the flour.
Pour the oil into the crater.
Gently mix it all together.
Enjoy mixing and learning about the properties of the dough as it is, or add small silicone bowls, spoons, or measuring cups to make small structures, hills, or pretend cupcakes.

Notes

The original recipe is an 8:1 ratio and we started off with half the recipe (4 cups of Flour and ½ cup of oil) because I didn't want to deplete my flour reserves, just in case. Turns out that this was such a hit and a full batch would have been equally wonderful, especially after our neighborhood friends wanted to come over and play with us.

How to Make Cloud Dough| Clough Dough Recipe| TinkerLab.com

More Playdough and Sensory Activities

Rainbow Play Dough

Gluten-free Cloud Dough

Flubber Gak Slime Exploration

Vinegar and Baking Soda

Flour and Water

Flour and Chalk

How to make Slime

By Rachelle

Today I’m sharing how to make slime. Homemade slime is so easy to make, and the payoff is huge. Not only do kids like playing with it, but grownups can’t resist either.

This Slime Recipe has been on my to-do list for ages, and I’m so glad we gave it a try.

Note: In case you’re looking for a slime recipe that uses saline or contact solution, click here >> Contact Solution Glitter Slime

This recipe fatefully fell into my lap after my daughter’s nursery school teacher made up a big batch of it for the kids last week. We used half of this recipe from Steve Spangler Science. When Steve says “the measurements don’t have to be exact,” I gained a huge amount of confidence. And it’s true, because we were pretty imprecise. Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief with me! This site also has a wonderful description on the science behind the recipe.

This particular slime, also called Flubber, Gluep, Glurch, or Gak, is made from glue, water, and the tiniest bit of Borax.

Note: Borax is not edible, so please use your best judgment and common sense if you choose to use this with young children.

Okay, here we go…

How to Make Slime

Ingredients

8 oz. bottle Elmer’s school glue
8 oz. water
1 teaspoon Borax (Sodium Tetraborate) mixed into 1/2 cup of warm water
Food coloring or liquid watercolors, optional

Steps

Mix the glue and water together in a mixing bowl.
Add a few drops of color, if desired.
Slowly add a small amount of the Borax solution into the water-glue solution. (This is where you don’t have to be precise)
Keep adding small amounts of the borax solution to the water-glue solution until it comes together like slime.
Play with your slime!

I wasn’t sure how messy this would get and set the whole project up in our big mixing tub. We began by squeezing an almost-full 4 ounce bottle of glue into a glass bowl. Then we mixed in 1 1/2 bottles of warm water to the glue. The recipe calls for 4 ounces of glue and 4 ounces of warm water…do you see how fast I went off-recipe!! But like Steve says, the measurements don’t have to be exact and it worked out just fine!

N added red food coloring and mixed it into a lovely shade of pink.

Then we mixed 1 teaspoon of Borax into 1/2 cup of water, and slowly added the solution to the glue mixture…

Until the slime started to come together. We did not use all of the Borax solution.

At first it was really wet and gooey.

And stringy and sloppy.

And then it started to pull together.

Until it was one easy-to-work-with mass of slime that could be pulled apart and manipulated…to some extent. Because really, this slime has a mind of its own.

N requested a muffin tray with the idea that it would make nice little cakes. Can you believe how viscous and pliable it is?! Completely different from play dough, and absolutely inspiring to little miss curious.

We often roll out our play dough, so she gave that a try and complained that it didn’t work. Good experiment!

Next she tried cookie cutters. Also a bust.

But the scissors…oh, the scissors were so much fun and completely rewarding with this medium.

+++++

When you’re done using your gak/flubber/slime, you can store it in a sealable container or Ziploc bag for about 2 weeks (when it may start to smell!).

Some of my readers have had questions about Borax. What is it? Is it the same as boric acid? I did some research and have answers:

Borax vs. Boric Acid

Are they the same thing? Actually, no! Borax and boric acid are similar, but not the same. Here’s the break down on the differences between borax and borix acid:

Borax (Na₂B₄O₇ · 10H₂O) is also known as sodium borate and sodium tetraborate contains sodium, boron, hydrogen, and oxygen. It’s naturally found in dry lake beds of arid areas such as California, Nevada, China, and Turkey. It’s a mineral and an inorganic salt (a salt that doesn’t contain carbon).

Boric acid (H3BO3), known as hydrogen borate, boracic acid, orthoboric acid and acidum boricum is made of boron, hydrogen, and oxygen. No sodium! It’s a natural anti-fungal that comes from boron. It’s found in some volcanic waters, hot springs, minerals, sea water, plants, and fruits. It can also be produced in a lab by combining Borax with a strong acid such as hydrochloric acid. You can read more about boric acid here.

More Slime and Dough Recipes

Easy Glitter Slime, made with Contact Solution

Rainbow Play Dough

How to Make Cloud Dough, the easiest dough recipe that calls for oil and flour.

How to Make Goop with just cornstarch and water.

Make amazing scented pumpkin spice playdough.

How to make Gluten-free Cloud Dough

Glowing Playdough

DIY Masa Playdough, made with masa harina

How to make Salt Dough with just salt, flour, and water.