making flubber....

let me just say... this was a FUN project to do with our kids!

We did it as part of our "Science Class" for our 1st grader & Kindergartener and they absolutely LOVED watching a liquid become a solid-ish substance before their very eyes. I found this original recipe on Pinterest and decided to to make our own with lots of pics as well.

So... to start out with, you need:

3 tsps. Borax

2 cups of Elmer's Glue

Warm water

Food coloring (we used Wilton's b/c I am apparently out of regular food coloring)

I had never bought Borax before (crazy, I know) and I found it in the laundry detergent section at Walmart.  It only came in a big box and the recipe only calls for 3 tsp., I thought that was kinda silly but who knows what else we will end up using it for??  The recipe calls for 2 cups of glue and since that sort of measurement isn't on the bottles, we sort of had to guesstimate it, but 2- 7.625 fl. 0z. bottles of Elmer's was just about right.

So we started out with 2 bowls and got ready to mix:

First we mixed the borax and 1 cup of warm water in a bowl, then in the other bowl we mixed the glue and 1 and half cups of warm water.  Our almost 7 year-old declared that the glue mixture looked like milk except chunkier (I thought that was a very appropriate description):

Stir, stir, stir...

I let both the girls stir while I tried to squeeze out every drop of glue I could.

Then we realized that we wanted to make several colors, so I got out 3 more bowls and divided the glue gunk between the 4 (that's including the original mixing bowl).

Then we added food coloring to each, mixing well.

Last step, (and this was the really cool part) I divided the borax/water mixture between each of the four bowls and let the girls mix away.  It INSTANTLY becomes flubber (no kidding).

becoming flubber-ish....

keep working it over bowls with hands....

it gets stretchy...

and VOILA!! we have FLUBBER!! (no Calley is not eating hers even though it looks like it)

look at the purple mommy!!

Our four colors :)

What to do with flubber besides squish it??

We got our cookie cutters out and the girls enjoyed "cutting" shapes out and them watching them "melt" into each other making new shapes.  Even our older kids (12 &14) enjoyed the flubber and want to make some of their own... well, we certainly have enough Borax for that!!