Glitter Gak

Pin It Both the Homemade "Gak" and Floam were a huge hit (we actually still have and use the floam!), and today after lunch, V. wanted to do "science."

This is the quickest experiment I can pull together (in fact, I was busy working on some science for after nap, but don't tell her that) so I headed to the learning closet to get the stuff.

I am not a fan of loose glitter, but glitter glue is pretty awesome, and we had some. All the recipes for Gak that I've seen specify white glue, but really, how different can they be? A quick Google search showed me that several other mothers had already realized that glitter glue is by far more awesome, and that white glue has no magical properties that make it super Gak-like.

The recipe is the same (1 bottle glue, 1/4 cup water, 1 tsp Borax) , the outcome is more sparkly. I wish we had the light table together, because this would have been even more awesome to do on a lit surface. I did end up putting it back into the borax water because it was stickier than it should have been. I don't think this was the result of different glue, just our impatients.

Glitter, without it invading every crevice of our home. I love it.

Sensory Bin: Snow!

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Yesterday, a Nor'Easter hit, and brought snow! Hooray! V. played in the snow last year, but that was different. She was a year old, and stomped around a bit, tasted it, cried because it was cold, and was over snow. (I built a snow man while she supervised. She was unimpressed.)

This was IT - the First Real Snow. We played in it a bit yesterday, but it wasn't until the sun went down that the real snow started to take hold, and turned into a winter wonderland, not just a dandruff field.

I ran down the stairs when she woke up, ready to play in the snow. Who needs breakfast? It's SNOW. 

Guess what? It was raining. Big, fat, wet, warm drops of rain were coming down, and V. hadn't even gotten out of her crib. I did the only sensible thing I could think of - I dumped out the sensory bin we had going and ran outside (in my pajamas, in the rain, without shoes...) to fill it with snow. I wasn't going to let rain ruin our fun.

I got V. out of bed and showed her the snow. She loved it! We made a snowman, which she insisted have ears and a snow hat. 

The tool bucket for the sensory bin table hasn't changed, but she had no interest in using anything but her hands. It is very packable snow, and she prides herself on making snowballs. That, and she's currently obsessed with all things baby, so making a baby out of snow was far cooler to her than using tools.

Then she remembered that yesterday we busted out her brand-new winter coat (I bought last spring for $12 from The Children's Place. Heck yes.) that I told her was for playing in the snow. Well, she had been playing in the snow and hadn't been wearing her special coat. She refused to play without her "No Kaket."

We wrote a big letter S along with some snow-related s-words on our chalkboard wall. (Oh yeah, that happened while on break, too. Awesome. I highly recommend finding a spare wall and painting it with chalkboard paint. I keep a grocery list there, and suddenly I can make dinner without trying to keep her busy or putting on Elmo.)

I drew the snowman, and let her draw the parts on it. She drew eyes, ears, arms, and was babbling about other things I didn't understand. Then she stood back and proudly reported that it was her uncle, Ben. (Looks just like him, really.)

While all this was going on, I cooked breakfast. I made the snowflake by cracking an egg into a cookie cutter, and it worked surprisingly well. I recommend spraying the cutter first. I didn't think of that until I was poking the egg out and wishing I had. Whoops.

(And the hash browns are from Trader Joe's. Seriously delicious.)

I hope if you have snow right now, you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Contact Paper Masterpiece

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Last week, I found cheap contact paper at our local hardware store. I was waiting for a rainy day to bust this out, but I get impatient when I'm excited.

So I did this today, instead of catching up on any one of the 10 or so saved blogs I need to polish write in front of this one. Just don't be surprised if in 12 years you see posts featuring a craft I did with 19-month-old V. "just yesterday!" ... it will happen.

Contact paper is cool. I also envisioned this being done on a window, but we have screens in the doors right now and my child likes to dump things. Instead, I taped the contact paper sticky-side-up to our "learning table" and let her at it.

First she just stuck her hand to it. Then she compared the sticky paper to the table, which is not (usually) sticky.

After she had a good time with that, I gave her little applesauce containers with tissue paper squares, colored rice, cut-up pipe cleaners, a cotton ball, and a little glitter. Thankfully she dumped the glitter right out onto the contact paper, where it stayed.

 Once she was done sticking and resticking everything, I folded her masterpiece in half, taped around the edges (because honestly, it had lost most of its stick by then and I didn't want glitter and rice everywhere) and we hung it in the window.

V. also hung a piece of paper under it, to finish off the look.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

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Recently, V. started tearing the pages in her coloring book apart. (We've worked long and hard to ensure this didn't transfer to real books.) Today, as I prepared lunch, I heard a shredding noise and realized it sounded slightly different. It was nothing tragic by any means, but it was a new magazine I hadn't had the opportunity to yet read. (And by new I mean "I just realized it somehow ended up in the house, and may get to read it before she is 5.)

So, I set up a tearing center. I took one brown bag and made a "nest" and a second, which I cut the top off of and filled with various papers from the recycle bin (including the top of the brown bag). Then I sat down and tore up a little bit of paper and waited for her to join me. She did and after a while I left her to make what is a wonderful bag of strips and scraps for paper mache. Everybody wins.

I have set up a sensory bin for this afternoon, but V. is not quite awake from nap (I hear her, though, so soon!) and I'm still operating with my sole camera being that of my (old) phone. 

Here's a sneak peek at next week's bin:

I know what that looks like, but I assure you it is not. Not that I'm going to say what they are exactly. You will need to come back for that! I made them using coffee, grounds, flour, salt, and water. There are some things I won't put into a sensory bin.

Floam!

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Remember the HUGE success that was homemade gak?

Well, after that, I went out and bought up a whole bunch of white glue when it went on sale.

I adored all those Nickelodeon slime, gak, moonsand products as a kid. (And, oh yes, I rocked the moon shoes.)

Floam was no acception and it is, for all intensive purposes, gak with foam balls. I was in need of making something fast to keep the Toddler busy for a while. Perfect.

So here is what you will need:

2tsp (ish) of Borax
1 small container of white glue (6oz? I should buy this stuff in a bigger container.)
water
foam balls... I stole about 1/4c from the beanbag chair and nobody is none the wiser.

First, pour the glue in a jar, bowl, or baggie. If you want to add color, put some food coloring in now. I was really pleased that the finished Floam didn't leak color (even though I did strip my daughter, just incase), so don't be afraid of adding a good deal of it! 

Next, pour in the foam balls. I didn't do this at this point, but we kneaded them in later and it was fine.

Add 1/4c water to the glue. (I'm not sure why this is necessary, or if it even is, really.)

Then, dissolve the Borax in 1/2c. water.

Slowly add the Borax to the glue. The Borax is what stops the glue from being runny and sticky, so the more you add, the stiffer the Floam will become. Keep adding it until you are happy with the consistency, being sure to mix them well. (Glue Pockets will spring up on you! Don't get yourself all gluey.)

Like before, it weirded her out at first. She wanted nothing to do with this.

Then she decided it was awesome, and played with it for 45 minutes!

Just like the gak, the floam is great for practicing toddler knife skills (we have those Gerber sets - she loves using the knife on this!), cutting with cookie cutters, pressing into molds, and bouncing! It may be tough to knead back together at first, but we store ours in a baggie (any air-tight container will do) and it always "self-heals" into a huge blob within minutes, so don't worry about chopping it into a million pieces.

Enjoy!