Fantastic Finds for the Fam{ily}

Now that I'm no longer working on Saturdays, I've deemed that these days be "Play Days," In which I do nothing else than play with my children, provide them with activities and play dates and just have fun. This Saturday was our first play day and we had our good friends Audra and Charlotte over to play with us!

First, we made Oobleck. (See my post on making Oobleck) The kids had great fun playing with this stuff, and they actually came back and asked to play with it again! All said, they played with it for a grand total of 75 MINUTES over two sessions and the adults even had some play time with the Oobleck too before we cleaned it up and got ready for the next project.

We even pulled prints from our oobleck. We were left with stained hands (which I'm happy to report have been cleaned up after a nice long bath) and a sense of great satisfaction that we were able to entertain them for that long with one simple item that is made from just two household ingredients. Five out of Five hearts for sure!

Next, we took a break to play some games. First we played "Crazy Cotton Balls", and the kids had a lot of fun chasing cotton balls from one room to the next.

They giggled uproariously during this whole activity. It didn't last very long, but then again, how enjoyable can be crawling around on your hands and knees for a very long time. Perhaps I should have kept this to carpeted floors. :)

Next up was "Catch with a Catch" which I didn't take a single picture of because the game was downright dangerous! The way you play is each player has a ball. They throw the ball up into the air and have to accomplish a task before the ball hits the ground. We gave them commands like, touch your nose, jump in the air, sit down, touch your toes, and spin in a circle. (not all at once, mind you!) It was fun, but it was short lived before the balls were flying too close to heads, tvs and other important pretties in the house, so we had to stop the fun. This game only earned two hearts from me.

Next up, was mess free painting. I found several suggestions of applying blobs of paint to a piece of paper, and then either A) inserting it in a plastic sleeve (which is what we did) of or B) using a ziploc baggie. Then, you let the kids mush the paint around with their fingers and make some fantastic art.

Overall, this was a fun activity, but seemed to take more time to put the paint onto the paper and into the sleeve than it did for them to actually paint with it. After some experimenting, it seems that it takes more paint to make a pretty swirly effect, but be warned, we used acrylic paints, and we weren't able to take them out of the sleeve afterward. The paint soaked into the paper and actually would peel, sticking to the plastic part. I didn't particularly care about the plastic sleeves, so I just decided to leave our works of art in them and we'll find some place to display them.

I even got into the art, and made my own. I thought the black and white contrast would be interesting, and yes, it was amazing! I think I'm going to have to explore this one more with my camera later.

Fun, mess free, but not as long as I would have liked it to be. I'm going to give it Four out of Five hearts.

Lastly, we popped up the Playhut Megaland toy that the girls got for Christmas, and us adults sat down for a bit! The girls had fun crawling through the tunnels and keeping all their toys inside.

They even found alternative uses for the little holes in the side.

See my review of the Playhut Megaland and why it deserves Five out of Five hearts.

Overall, Saturday Play Day was a success! I'm already dreaming up ideas for the next week!

Today Lily had a play date and we decided to make Oobleck! Oobleck, as you might know is a gooey substance that is both a liquid and a solid and has some very interesting properties. I thought it would be something fun that they could play with and see how it would entertain them! There have been several occasions in my life in which I have made oobleck, however they have all been a very long time ago and I haven't felt the need nor opportunity to make it again. Well, now I have children! (and this is a very good excuse!)

For today's Oobleck, we used the following items and ingredients:

Roughly 1.5 c Cornstarch
Roughly 1 c of Water (read on to see why I say "Roughly")
Casserole dishes, about 2" deep
Food coloring (must find stain free food coloring, if it even exists)
Our hands

How it's done:
Put your cornstarch in the casserole dish and slowly mix in the water using your hands. You'll notice that when there isn't much water, or when the water is separated from the cornstarch, it is very hard to mix. You might need to add more water or cornstarch to get the right consistency (which is why I said "roughly" earlier) We had to help the children get it going. You'll know it's the right texture when you are able to pick it up and shape a ball with it, but then it will melt pretty quickly in your hand. You can give it just one color or you can add several colors and marble them together as we did.

DISCLAIMER: This stuff is super awesome. It makes a mess, but I guarantee that your kids will LOVE this activity and play with it forever. You will even want to play with it. It's nearly impossible to keep your hands OUT of the Oobleck, actually.

Our kids played with it for 45 minutes straight before the first one decided that she was done, and the second followed suit quickly. However, as anyone who has 3-4 year old children knows, for them to be interested in it for that long is amazing.

After a while, just playing with the Oobleck seemed boring, so we decided to try our luck at pulling oobleck prints just like The Imagination Tree, and it was super fun! Each of the kids pulled 3 prints, then they decided that they were done, and cleaned up.

After they were all cleaned up, however, us adults decided to try our luck at pulling prints! It was super fun!

I recommend letting the print dry, then just rubbing your hand over it to remove the excess oobleck mixture and reveal more color that soaks into the paper!

About two hours after we finished with the oobleck, the kids came back around asking for more! The water dries up quite a bit, but we just added a bit more water and they were back in business!
The blog over at Mossy Mossy contains a lot of really interesting facts about Oobleck and why it behaves the way it does- you should check it out!

All in all, this activity earns 5/5 Hearts from me as a mom, it kept the kids entertained for a really long period of time and I've got Lily asking me already when we're going to do it again!

Have you Made Ooobleck? If so, share it here!