Look at that awesome bilateral coordination practice of using both hands together and crossing midline to pull apart the slime. My mama Occupational Therapy heart loves it!

Practice pre-writing lines and shapes– use the slime to create vertical and horizontal lines, circle shapes, cross shapes and more. All of these are needed for future handwriting skills. This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Hobby Lobby. The opinions and text are all mine. Children and adults both love playing with slime, and they should love it as there are many benefits of playing with slime. Search for hidden objects in the slime– we used our butterfly or flower confetti for this. You could count out how many are hidden as your child pulls them out of the slime. Or sort the objects by color or types. The possibilities are endless with this one. A child has to learn how to pay attention, and to make slime forces them to focus on the task in front of them.Playing with slime is an amazing, tactile, sensory experience while promoting mindfulness, focus and encouragement of playing independently and promoting healthy motor skills. After adding the eye drop mixture, it turned into this amazing stretchy slime that was so fun to pull apart. I made this part of the slime just to be safe, since my daughter in four. If you have an older children, they may be able to help with this part, but always supervise. Slime is basically a chemistry experiment representing the process when two substances combine and what happens when their molecular structure changes to form a new substance.

Cornstarch or cornflour, spinach, oil, hand soap, food colouring and other ingredients to make slime.

When a trend such as slime appears, there are many companies producing and selling it. And, in the case of slime, it unfortunately brought with it some warnings as a result of some of the products containing borax. This prompted a Which? report on the products on sale. The EU safety standard specifies that toy slimes must have boron levels that fall below 300mg/kg and toy putties must have boron levels that fall below 1,200mg/kg. Exposure to excessive levels of boron could cause irritation, diarrhoea and vomiting in the short term, and may impair fertility and cause harm to unborn children in pregnant women. Make scented slime for added sensory input– If you have some scented food coloring or essential oils, you could consider adding those to the slime for added sensory input. Calming or organizing scents such as Vetiver or lavender could be great additions.

All the above may seem contradictory to the actual hands on experience of sensory play but I found in working with settings that you come across some children that struggle with experiencing messy play while others love it – each child is unique. Though the slime making process can be messy and a bit tiring, the truth is that playing with slimes has many benefits, not only for kids but also for adults.

Satisfying Slime Simulator

So, all of these activities promote problem-solving skills while having some fun and enhancing creativity too. As my daughter was playing with our slime, she started pulling out all kinds of things to use with it. I was amazed at her creativity and focus. Here are some hands-on ways to play with slime, inspired by my 4 year old. Slime making and playing with needs some problem-solving aptitude to make an amazing and perfect slime. The open-ended play that occurs with a resource such as slime means that children can work alone or cooperate if they wish, and explore at varying levels. Using slime allows for child-initiated activity opportunities.

Another strategy with very sloppy slime is placing it in a plastic sealed bag. This allows children to press squeeze and manipulate the slime to some degree. Have you seen all the slime recipes floating around online recently? It seems slime is really popular right now. And I'm always up for a good sensory play recipe to try with my daughter. So when Hobby Lobby asked if I would team up with them to create some slime and share about it, I jumped at the opportunity. Plus, who doesn't love shopping at Hobby Lobby? My daughter and I found these 5 fun and hands-on ways to play with slime. I think she could play with it for hours! Before we started playing with our slime, I had to find a recipe that would actually work. And that was harder than you would think. I attempted a recipe with powdered borax and that was a definite dud. So I went on the search for a slime recipe that was bound to work the first time.If you have ever read a slime recipe, you will notice that all the ingredients and instructions are given in a format of ratio so that one needs to compare proportions and then do accordingly. Always make sure that what you use with children is safe, contains only safe products and ingredients. Consider what each product has or each recipe as some children have allergies. My daughter wanted to use glitter and butterfly confetti for her first attempt. We also made a pink slime with food coloring later on. Playing with slime allows your child to add new things to it, for example — stars, glitter and sequins, which develops the creative aspect of your child.