Slime Time

Program date: 4/10/19

One of the most important things I have learned in children’s librarianship is: every mess can be cleaned up. Slime is one of the messiest things I have ever done in the library. It is also by far the most consistently successful after school programs we have ever done. The first time I did slime in the library (Jan 2018), I had 58 kids show up. About 30 registered, so it was absolutely crazy. I only have 28 chairs around tables in the program area, so we moved every extra chair over. We still didn’t have enough, so I pulled down all of the front facing books on top of the lowest shelf, and tossed a table cloth over the row of shelves. (Insert shrug emoji here) Sometimes you have to do what your community LOVES even if things get a little crazy. And even if you end up picking slime out of the carpet AND your jeans.

When we do slime, we set a table up in the story pit with all of the ingredients. I generally try to get 2 people to help, so that we can dish out ingredients as kids essentially go down the line, buffet style. I found a recipe for slime on Pinterest, and I halved it to save $ and to make sure that each kid didn’t come home with a TON of slime. I didn’t think their parents would appreciate that too much. This time, I had 36 kids. Still more chairs than I have at the tables, but it was a lot more manageable than the first time!

Here’s the recipe I used:

 1/4 cup Elmer’s glue

3/4 cup Shaving Cream

1 1/4 tbs Contact solution

A couple of drops of food coloring

This is the halved recipe. The full one is in the above Pinterest link.

As the kids came in we gave them a ziploc bag and a sharpie to write their name in it. This was for their slime when it was totally finished. I called tables one at a time to come up to the ingredients table. They picked up a Styrofoam bowl and a wooden craft stick (one of the thicker ones, for mixing). As they went down the line, the staff members dished out the right increments of materials, and the kids took their bowl back to their seat.

Dishing out materials takes a long time, so sometimes the kids who go first have their slime all the way done by the time the last table gets called. I have not yet figured out a way to remedy this! After all of the kids have materials, I immediately go to them and help them stir. Some of them don’t quite grasp the concept of stirring until you are done (not just when you don’t want to stir anymore) and some only stir the top level so the glue all sits on the bottom and doesn’t get mixed in. A particular struggle this time was that the bowls were NOT big enough to hold all the materials, so they had HEAPING slime by the time they were done. It was everywhere and it was hilarious.

When their slime was almost all set (not sticking to the side of the bowl), I had them dig it out with their hands and squish it up that way for awhile. Once it was totally set (not sticky at all) they could play with it until it was time to go, then they put it in their ziploc and we were all done!

Some of their slimes turned out SO great! Here are a couple of the best ones:

 

**Quick tip for getting slime out of clothing is to freeze it with ice and then pick it off. Here’s a just-for-fun picture of me freezing slime on my jeans so I can clean them off. Like I said in the beginning, every mess can be cleaned up.