I'm the first to admit that when it comes to sensory/messy play and arts & crafts...I'm not the most enthusiastic of Mums!
Infact...if truth be told...I passionately hate such activities!
I hate mess, I hate faffing about making things, I hate how it can take four times as long to set an activity up as it actually takes the child to complete it...I'm just not a fan!!! I'd MUCH rather sit them down with a toy and be done with it!
Unfortunately for me, my toddler son disagrees with my stance on messy play and recently asked me why I don't do activities with him like Hobby Mom on YouTube does with her kids (I hate you Hobby Mom!)
So...in the interest of trying to be nice...I decided to look up some activity ideas and set aside some dedicated time for them - and I thought i'd blog about the things we try to help out any other non-crafty Mums struggling with messy play/craft activities!
Our first endeavour was slime!
I thought this would appeal to my son as he's a big fan of playdoh and anything that he can dunk his toys into...although he does usually dislike getting his hands dirty so it could have gone either way!
But it was something I'd never tried before, so we decided to give it a go!
Here's how we made the slime:
1) We poured some PVA glue into a large bowl...about 6-7 dessert spoons worth
2) We added in a dollop of water based paint...we made 3 different colours, you can try as many as you like! ... and we mixed the glue and paint together
3) We added a couple of dollops of Almat Bio Laundry Gel from Aldi - I have heard the same effect is achieved with the non-bio too but I've only tried the Bio version myself! Apparently the type of laundry gel used is important as not all of them contain the right ingredients!
We then mixed the ingredients together firmly and after a few seconds of mixing, the smooth paste started to become sticky and slime like - if it seemed to be taking too long to mix we added another dollop of Almat Laundry Gel and that solved the problem!
Tyne loved helping me mix the slime ingredients together and watching them transform from a runny paste into a gooey slime!
Once our 3 colours were all made up, I set them down in separate containers to begin with to let Tyne explore them....
He LOVED experimenting with how stretchy they were...dipping his hands in and grabbing fist fulls of each colour, and seeing how long they would stretch!
He kept repeating over and over again "Oh my goodness, it's so gooey!"
He soon wanted to do what he ALWAYS wants to do in activity...involve his toy trains!!! So he fetched one of them and dunked it into the slime...this provided him with a good half hour or so of fun as he dunked Harvey his train into the different colours, buried the train under the slime and fished him back out!
After he'd played with the colours seperately for a while, I showed him how to pick them all up at once and smoosh them together to make a rainbow!
He LOVED this and spent another good 15 minutes or so stretching out his "rainbow" and talking about the colours!
All in all I actually ended up having a lot of fun with this activity - it was really simple to make the slime, the combination of pva glue and laundry gel meant it washed out easily and didn't stick to the surfaces or dishes we used (We had a play mat down on the floor, and he wore old clothes just in case but there was no damage anyway!), it smelt pretty nice and it was good to see Tyne have such fun with it - he spent a good 45 minutes to an hour playing with it which is the longest he's spent on any messy/craft activity so far!
I also feel that it really encouraged his language development as he explored new words to describe the texture and feel of the slime.
I would definitely do this activity again!
Have you ever tried slime with your children? What are your favorite messy play activities? As always, I'd love to hear from you!
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