How to make Gloop!

I decided to be really brave and make some gloop – I had been putting it off because I thought it would be incredibly messy and although I don’t mind some mess I keep thinking of the clean up. But the kitchen floor needs mopping anyhow so if it was really messy then it wouldn’t be such problem.

On our explore last week J was fascinated by the mud and getting his wellie stuck in the mud so I decided to use this as inspiration for the messy play and we got “Stuck in the gloop”.

What you need to make Gloop

Corn Flour (Corn Starch)
Water
We added food coloring to make it muddy colored (needed to add more as it ended up pinky instead of brown)

We added jungle animals to explore the gloop

More Sensory Activities for Babies and Toddlers can be found in our selection of Tried and Tested Activities for Under 18-month-olds!

How you Make Gloop

To make gloop I used a large shallow food storage plastic tub and added some corn flour to it. Then in a jug I mixed together some water and red and green food colouring intending to make brown for some mud (as you can see the mud turned out pink instead of brown but J and T didn’t seem to mind that it was pink at all). Into the corn flour I poured a little of the coloured water at a time and mixed with my hands – it was really odd mixing it as it would go solid and then I would have to add more (I’ve never played with it myself!) I got it to the consistency that it was going solid when moulded and then liquid when released and put it on our little table with a messy mat underneath it.

I first played with J and T with the gloop showing how if you mould it a solid is formed and letting it go. T who is much more adventurous than J is stuck her hand under mine as the gloop fell off and scrunched it up to make it solid and then started to play copying what I had been doing. J put his hand in and gave a woo… and then quickly asked for his hands to be washed as they were messy (yes I have a child that hates to be messy at the moment!) so I gave him the jungle animals that I collected out of the toy box earlier to play with.

With the animals in the tub J was happy to get messy and tried to make the animals splash like we had done with our water table over the summer, but gloop when hit becomes hard and the animals kept getting stuck in the gloop – which he pointed out was just like my wellie mummy – I guess that must have been the high light of last weeks walk.

J and T played a little while together with the gloop at the table but then T wanted to play with the animals as well which J was having none of so I put T in her hair chair and J at the table. Onto T’s high chair I poured some of the gloop and gave J the tub to continue playing with the gloop until he was finished. T loved playing with it on her tray – what I didn’t expect was that it would evaporate quite so quickly and very soon it became more and more solid on the tray. Luckily J tired of the gloop before T did and I was able to put the tub back on her tray for her to continue playing and exploring the different properties.

Author

Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.