Gold Stretchy Putty

This has many names when you are looking around Pinterest and Google and various "mommy blogs". We call it stretchy putty at our house because it really isn't very slimy, and we have made slime that was slimy.  My 8 year old daughter made this mostly by herself. I helped pour the liquid starch because it was a large bottle.

To make this fun sensory play stuff you'll need:

• 1 5oz bottle of clear Elmer's glue
• 2 Tbs gold glitter or gold liquid water color or gold glitter glue (you can also use food coloring)
• 8 Tbs liquid starch

(you can use any color, really, we just happened to have gold at home)

pour all the glue into a bowl and add the glitter/glitter glue/liquid water color and mix. Add 2Tbs liquid startch and mix well. Add 4 Tbs liquid starch and mix well. Add the last 2Tbs liquid starch and knead. This will be a bit stringy at first which can be fun to play with. But the more you knead it the firmer it will become. I think we kneaded for about 5 minutes or so. You can form it into a ball and then set it on the table and watch it "melt" into a puddle. I made some for school as well and the kids thought it was the best stuff. Even my little guy who really hates getting things on his hands and won't touch most wet or slimy things, loved this. 

Why We Need to Get Outside More

Now that the weather is nice again and it's easier to get outside we need to take our kids out and help them (and ourselves) re-connect with nature. Parks and playgrounds are wonderful, hiking the trials at the county and state parks is lots of fun, even just playing your backyard. Here is a good article explaining why it is so important for us to get our kids and ourselves outside more. I've read books on this topic before and I happen to agree with the idea that all of us are becoming more and more disconnected with the natural world around us. Nature Deficit Disorder is now an official diagnosis in the DSMV-V. Wow, I guess this is not something just a hand-full of isolated people believe in anymore.

Nature Deficit Disorder: Our Disconnect from Nature is Simply Unnatural in the Toca Boca parents digital magazine 

Yes, I see the irony in the fact that while they and I are supporting the idea to unplug from our technology and get outside the magazine is completely digital. :)