Sensory Activities with gelatin

Today we share something that is so icky gooey and sticky that it is supremely fun for your mess loving kids. These sensory activities for kids does so much for your child- a quick personal observation, language explosion during sensory play, curiosity piques and many interesting questions come about. TwoDaloo has a fantastic article on “Sensory Play- Is it necessary?” While you are there, check out her series on language development through sensory play.

On to today’s fun.

Sensory Activities: making”edible” fake snot!

We are making gooey stuff which looks like SNOT! Yes, it is apparently a very popular science experiment for school age kids. I have seen this idea on many science for kids websites. Here is one.

The recipe calls for unflavored gelatin and corn syrup. Check out all our previous sensory activities using gelatin. Be warned that this is a messy and sticky activity.

I added few fall scents ( pumpkin, apple, vanilla and cinnamon) to small bowls. I added hot water to the scents along with food colors and set them on the table.

Th kids added unflavored gelatin to the colored water. We let them set for about 5 minutes  until they start to thicken. Don’t let the gelatin get too thick. Once soft, we added corn syrup. You should be able to see strands resembling snot! [quick science : protein from the gelatin + sugars from the corn syrup = gooey snot strands]. The original recipe calls for much lesser gelatin. While the snot was great it was not thick enough to manipulate and play. It was indeed a perfect mock snot. Since we increased the gelatin we achieved a thicker consistency that worked for us.

Now the original experiment true to the name makes only green colored gooey stuff. Did we stop with just the food colors? We certainly DID NOT? What other crazy thing did we do? Add glitter, yes glitter.

The kids went to down mixing and playing with the resulting gooey substance. The best of all, my older kid came up with this ingenious name – Princess Snot because we like to think that when princesses have the sniffles, their snot is pink and has lots of glitter.

The substance is stretchable and can be pulled and pinched in many ways. As the gelatin gets thicker it loses the snot like consistency and gets more slime-like!

Since we had made multiple colors, te kids were so excited to dip their hands in all the bowls. Also the kids were attracted towards the vanilla scent and added lots of gold and green glitter and a ton of orange food color.

Of course mixing happened.

The kids loved and played only with the pink and vanilla snot. I wouldn’t bother with the rest. Bright colors and glitter were enough.

Here is our reality shot- unedited, uncut version..

Recipe for this sensory activity

• 1/2 cup boiling water
• Add 3 envelopes of unflavored gelatin
• 1 envelope = 2.5 TSP
• 1/4 cup of corn syrup

          

Thanks for reading