Playing with a Puddle of Goo

It's nothin' new. 

It's an oldy and goodie.

It's cornstarch n' water (with a little color thrown in).  But it sure made my kiddos happy for twenty minutes this afternoon!  And for anyone who knows my kids, that's a looooong time!

It all started with my kindergartener's take home reader: a book called Making Ooze Monsters.   Naturally, it was a big hit.  I loved playing with cornstarch gloop when I was a kid (okay, fine.  Still do!), so we pulled out all of our ingredients:

Do you like how my picture turned out all "I'm from a seventies TV show" so I kind of tweaked it more in that direction?  I thought you might.

Add 2-3 drops of food coloring to 1/2 cup water.  Mix into 1cup cornstarch.  If your mixture needs more water, add a little.  We had to play with the consistency--the book suggested 2/3 cup but it was too runny.  Then I added too much cornstarch...

Finally it was just right:

 My boys were seriously happy about being allowed to get messy.  Getting to mix the food coloring into the water though?  YEAH BUDDY. 

I liked that I wasn't super worried when the baby came to check out the huge glob of goo that mysteriously ended up in the corner.  "I don't know Mom, I kept my hands over the table the WHOLE TIME!"  It's just cornstarch and water...it won't kill him before I wash off my hands...

In the end, we turned our gloop into monsters, like the book suggested, using buttons for eyes.  Yes, the mouths are due to my mad computer skillz--the buttons looked lonely.

It was a mess--think this picture multiplied all over the floor, their hands, and clothes.  But it cleans up so super easy!  I tell myself that it's really good for my kids to get messy.  And when it's an easy to clean mess, it makes all of us happy!