Silly Slime!

So we recently participated in Math and Science Night at Kittrell Elementary. After much deliberation and several changes of ideas, I decided that I would have the kids make something fun and Halloween-esque: enter silly slime!

Materials: 

• Elmer's Glue (not the Dollar Store knock off!! Use the brand name)
• Borax (for much thicker consistency; as you'll read, using other detergents just doesn't work as well)
• Ziplock bags for easy clean up
• Measuring spoons for the math portion of the activity

Optional: 

• food coloring

The tutorial video I used:



And here's where I found the Borax-free* recipe:
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2015/02/slime-recipes-kid-tested-teacher-approved

*I chose to use the Borax-Free recipe as I didn't know any of the children attending, and therefore had no idea of any potential allergies.

All-in-all, the night was a success in terms of student engagement (I'm not quite sure how happy the parents may have been with me, though...). A highlight of the night was hearing the commentary from the kids ("How does it DO that?" "It's not a liquid or a solid...what IS it?"); apart from the 'mess' factor, they seemed to be genuinely interested in the activity.

What I really liked about this activity is the applicability across several grades; you can meet 2nd and 3rd grade standards by measuring out the ingredients, discussing ingredient ratios, experimenting with color combinations, and discussing homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures and defining a solution in a fun way. You can then extend this to go into 8th, 9th, and 10th grade standards and discuss the physical and chemical properties of polymers, hypothesizing and experimenting with changes in recipes, and graphing the results.

If I were to do this again, I would definitely like to do it with Borax, however, this does still worry me as going into a classroom with potential allergies, I would have to be careful in how much the student would come into contact with the Borax itself.