Green Goop Sensory Stuff

I wanted to name this post “Corn Starch is Magical” because that’s basically what this is about. Cooks know that corn starch is great for thickening just about any liquid, and in the sensory play world it’s wonderful for changing the texture of all sorts of things, too.

We use it in sidewalk chalk paint. And mixed with shaving cream for fluffy sensory fun.

The girl wanted to do that activity again over Christmas, but I didn’t happen to have any extra shaving cream lying around, so we went hunting for something else we could try.

I have seen people do things with corn starch and hair conditioner (which ultimately makes a kind of playdough, as you can see on this post from Kids Activities Blog) but we decided to use some leftover baby shampoo instead.

Much like with the shaving cream, we just started with some shampoo, some corn starch and some food coloring (this time neon green) and mixed it and added some more and played with it.

We didn’t make playdough; it stayed goopy and sticky and probably more like a soft gak than something you could really mold or play with.

She liked it for a little while, the realized she couldn’t easily get it off her hands.

Then it was washup time (and time for a soak in the bathtub to get all the green food coloring off), but it was a lot of fun to try and to see what would happen.

These sorts of random sensory “let’s try it and see what happens” kinds of things are my favorite, because it’s making predictions, it’s science, we use lots of fun words to describe what’s happening and what it feels like, and it’s just good messy fun.

Do you do sensory stuff like this with your kids? I’d love to hear about it!