If you’re a parent, you might probably have been asked by your kids to make some slime because they must have come across some in school and on the more practical note, might want to try this with you. Slime is a polymer that can be molded, poured, and stretched and if you’ve tried to make this in the past, then you’ll surely know it’s definitely sticky! Slime can be made in different ways but the end result is surely worth it as it has proved to be a great stress reliever, also giving you the perfect chance to create some parent-children bond, as well as learning more important chemical principles.
Children love to make slime as it proves to be a great sensory play experience for them and while it is widely believed that making slime with them means you’re exposing them to some chemical substances, there are very safe methods to make non-toxic DIY slime at home, the type that will bring no harm neither to you nor your children. Kids love to make slime because the end product is always fun, and to some adults, it is even more fun.
If you have all the right ingredients ready, making a slime might not take you up to 5 minutes although will require you to try and fail if you’re doing it for the first time and on the other hand, you might just be lucky to get everything right on your first try. The fact that children’s hands are not always too far from their mouths means you have to be very cautious of the ingredients you are using in making the slime and also have to be very sure that they are non-toxic.
Let’s get started on how to make the best non-toxic homemade slime right in your own home.
Ingredients
Since all we’re trying to learn to make is a non-toxic slime, you will try as much as possible to make your ingredients children-friendly and below are the ones you should always make available;
- School glue
- Saline solution also known as contact lens solution
- Food coloring
- Baking soda
Get this ingredients ready and you should closely monitor the process, depending on your children’s age or if you feel like they’re old enough, just leave them to do the handling themselves but never take your eyes off them.
Directions
STEP 1: Put the glue into a mixing bowl
The first thing you have to do is to put the school glue you’ve got into a large mixing bowl (the larger the mixing bowl, the more expressive the children get with the mixing as it will give them more space to stir as much as they want either with spoons or their hands).
STEP 2: Add the baking soda and keep mixing
After you must have poured the glue into a mixing bowl and stirred for a while, the next thing to do is to add the baking soda to the mixing bowl and keep stirring. Do not forget to stir well.
STEP 3: Add the food coloring
This is the point where you get to add any color or mix of colors of your choice to the mixture. The quantity of the food coloring you add depends on how you want the slime to look like; you add more food coloring to have a bolder look, and less to have a less bold color.
STEP 4: Add your saline
This is one of the most important moments of slime making as it decides whether or not your slime comes out good. Once you add your contact lens solution into the mixture, you’ll almost immediately start to realize that the whole thing starts becoming sticky and that’s where you’ll know you’re approaching the end result of the whole slime-making process. At this point, you’ll need to keep stirring and it’ll get to a point where you spoons won’t just be able to handle the slime’s stickiness, hence, you’ll have to switch to your hands as they will be the only things that can help as they slime starts to get thickened. You have to keep stirring and mixing until the slime looks very nice and thick and you keep trying this until every liquid in the slime is soaked up and you have something really nice in the bowl.
What you have after going through the whole steps and recipe is the end product and that’s where the real fun lies.
Store the slime in a sealed container and every time your kids need it to play with, just go bring it out for them and let have the long-lasting fun that they worked for, at least, for a few weeks until it completely dries out.
Safety is really important in a case like this and it should definitely be made a priority, which is why you have to duly follow those steps so nobody gets hurt.