Rubber Therapy

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One of our favorite places to visit is the Children's Museum of Art, where they have rooms full of wonderful sensory experiences, including a tub full of this stuff called flubber. You just stick your hands in this soft rubbery magic and enjoy the way it feels, the way it expands and then rolls into a small ball...it's just the neatest stuff.

Well imagine our excitement when they told us we could try this at home. We made some today and it was therapy in a bowl. E-man spent a good half hour playing with it. I didn't even want to take my hands out of it.

Here's how to make it.

Ingredients:
1 T Borax
8 oz Elmer's Glue
Food coloring of your choice
1 cup hot water
Large mixing bowl
Small mixing bowl
Wooden spoon

(The hardest thing for me to find was the Borax. It wasn't in any of the grocery stores or pharmacies in my neighborhood so I ended up ordering it from Amazon.)

Step 1:
Mix 8 oz of Elmer's glue with 2/3 a cup of hot water until smooth. Then mix in the food coloring of your choice.

Step 2:
In the small mixing bowl, dissolve 1 tablespoon of Borax in 1/3 cup of hot water.

Step 3:
Add the Borax mixture to the colorful glue mixture and let sit for one minute.

Step 4:
Here comes the messy, fun part. Get your hands in there and start mixing it up. In a couple minutes it starts turning into this smooth rubbery stuff. Enjoy!

The cleanup:
When we were done, I just stuck my four year old right into the tub and let him splash around while I cleaned up the rest of the mess. I was worried the clothes we were wearing would become our permanent flubber clothes, but I stuck them in the washer and the flubber came right out.

You can re-use it if you store it in an airtight container.