Glop!

Towards the end of May, at the end of the school year, my eldest child asked if we could make some glop.  I guess he'd either done it at school or heard about someone who had made it at home.  He informed me all we needed was some borax and glue.  I kept putting off the craft but when I recently found the recipe on Pinterest, I pinned it and decided to give it a go. 

It was the first time I'd made something I'd pinned from Pinterest.

We already had everything we needed on hand so that part was easy.  The two older boys (aged 7 and 4) put on some new-to-them kid-craft-aprons and started helping me mix ingredients.   

It was really cool to see the glop start to set up as we combined the two bowls. 

I divided the mixture as best I could and let them have at it. 

Do you see how stringy and gooey that is?  In the eyes of a child, that means complete fun.  In the eyes of a parent, that means complete mess!  So much for aprons and paper spread out on the table.  This stuff got eh-ver-y-ware!  Luckily, it wasn't horrible to clean up.  Not the easiest, but it did seem to "crumble" a bit as I rolled it, which made it semi-easy to pick up. 

The next day, I decided we all needed some fresh air and figured this stuff was best played with outside.  Boy was I wrong.

The youngest boy (13mo.) managed to knock the play mat off of the tv tray and the slime  that was on the playmat ended up on the ground.  Do you see the orange goop on the brick?  Hoo-whee was he eldest child mad.  We tried picking most of it up but, as you can guess, it was full of dirt specks and was gross.  We got him settleed down and the middle child shared his glop with the eldest....and the wind knocked the play mat off the tv tray.  More glop on the ground.  I have not seen a tantrum to that degree come from the eldest since he was a toddler.  He informed me that I made a horrible decision when I told them they should play with the glop outside. 

The rest of the glop got thrown away.  We will not make more glop in this household. 

Oh, and if you can see the face on the youngest boy back there - he was mad, too, because he was not in the pack-n-play mood that afternoon. 

Sometimes reality gets in the way of fun afternoon plans.

At least now we know.  And maybe next time, I'll pin something a bit easier to play with.