Glue-Goo Galore!

Today we tried a really fun experiment with glue.  It is “G Week” in our classroom, so this fit right in rather nicely.  Plus, with Halloween coming up, I thought it would be fun to play with goo (it was)!  Of course, this activity could be done any time of the year.

We made the “Glue-Goo” solution (I’ll explain how below), which is really fun to play with by itself.   Then, for even more excitement, we placed it inside a colander hung from the ceiling and watched what happened.

I first heard about this great idea from the “Ooey Gooey Lady” (yes, she is as fun as she sounds!).  Then I saw really great pictures of the fun in action at a blog called Play-Based Classroom.  It looked like so much fun, I just had to try it out in my classroom!

I changed the experiment a little by changing the mixture.  The ladies mentioned above used something called “Flubber”- a mixture that includes glue and borax.  Instead of flubber, we made a very similar solution using glue and liquid laundry starch.  This is commonly called home-made silly putty.  We, of course, in honor of “G Week” called it Glue-Goo.  I would like to try it again another day with the “Flubber” recipe. 

We started by mixing the solution with the children.  I like doing this part with the kids so they can see and experience the transformation.  I picked up the gallon of glue and started pouring some into the water table and watched as the kids’ faces’ looked a bit shocked and excited at this.  Then I took out the liquid starch and started pouring some of that in, fielding questions as to what it is and what it is used for.  At this point you might be wondering if I measured or how much of each component I used.  To answer, no I did not measure, I’m more of an “add a little of this and little more of that till it’s just right” kind of girl.  That being said, it’s about 2 parts glue to 1 part starch.  We also added some paint right out of the bottle.

It will start out really sticky, which some kids really enjoyed (while others really didn’t)!  One girl asked me to not put any more starch in, so it could stay sticky.  Another girl just said “ew!” and asked me how she could get it off her hands.  When the substance has become well mixed, it will be somewhat smooth and slimy, and only a little sticky (like silly putty).

Catching the drips!

Once we had it all mixed up, I put some of it in the colander and left some of it in the water table for the kids to play with.

It took a bit of time, but it slowly started to drip teardrop-shaped balls and as those tear drop fell down, they pulled long spider-webby, hair-like strings down with them.  This gave us the opportunity to talk about another G word: gravity!

You can see here that we have two different batches, the bright orange and the lighter orange. The brighter orange was thicker and did not string out from the colander.

We left this up all day, even through snack time so we could watch the effects.  The children were so interested in watching the strings coming down that they didn’t even touch it very much after play time was over.

Look at those strings!

All and all, a fun day with sensory experiences, chemistry, physics and phonics!