Messy Week Part 1: Silly Putty/Slime

This is the first in a three part series on our very messy and oh, so fun last week of preschool.

To start off the week, we made slime, often referred to as Silly Putty. The recipe for slime is quite simple:

2 parts white glue
1 part liquid starch
we added a few drops of liquid water color
pour the ingredients on a tray and mix by hand

I am not sure if it was using a different brand of the starch than usual or the measuring, but our silly putty was really, really sticky and gooey. It never took on a coagulated consistency. The children had an amazing time playing with it, but clean up was a huge process. The parent who was helping with this activity did find that using vinegar helped to break up the slime and make cleaning easier. She even used it to get the slime out of her daughter's clothes and hair.

I usually put the slime in baggies and let the children take it home to continue playing with it, but this was so drippy and sticky that I figured I would save parents from the cleanup we had in our classroom. We LOVE messy projects at school, but not everyone loves them at home.

"This is definitely process art!" commented my parent assistant. The best kind there is for young children!