Slime

I've been trying to come up with activities for my boys that do not involve: The Freshbeat Band, dumping the garbage down the stairs, destroying furniture, or conducting toilet-water parties in the bathroom. I saw a recipe for this slime on pinterest, and thought we could give it a try as a special science experiment-and they LOVED it. 
Here's what you need:

If you want opaque slime, use the white school glue. We happened to have the clear, and I thought it turned out cool. Borax is a laundry booster, and I found it with the laundry detergent at the grocery store for $5. You'll also need some water and some food coloring.

First, make two solutions:
Borax Solution: Mix 1 tsp. borax in 1 cup of hot water. Mix until borax stops dissolving. (The mixture will still be a little grainy at the bottom)
Glue solution: Mix 4 oz. container glue with 1 cup hot water. Add your food coloring (for our "radioactive" slime I mixed green and yellow food coloring)
Start adding the Borax Solution to the Glue Solution in small amounts. It will immediately start to gel. Mix with your hands as you add to get the desired texture. I used the entire Borax Solution, and our slime got quite thick.


Obviously, the slime is quite messy- but since it is made of washable glue and laundry detergent, it's an easy clean-up.


You can store the slime in a zip-lock bag, where it will stay nice and slimy for up to a week. I would not technically know this, since as soon as Josh came home from work he requested that it please be thrown directly into the garbage. (This may have due to the fact that I let Owen take the bag of slime to Dylan's room to "show her", and by the time Josh got home there were green particles in every room and surface of the house. Probably don't allow your children to do this.)

A pretty serious bath was required after our experiment, but a bubble bath is better than cleaning old soup off the basement stairs any day.