How to Be Awesome at Sensory Play: Goop

I've talked before about Cricket's hesitance to jump right into messy play activities.  She just prefers not to be covered in weird stuff, and really, who can blame her?

I keep trying, though, just to expose her to lots of different sensory experiences.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I tried a really messy activity and she loved it!

It was a rare evening when we had finished dinner and had a chunk of time before we had to get her ready for bed, so we decided to browse some of my favorite blogs for a fun bath activity.  I found this one on Growing a Jeweled Rose, one of my favorite (or favourite, since she's British) mommy blogs.

We made goop.  Goop is just cornstarch and water, with a little food coloring thrown in.  If you mix it at the right proportions (about 60/40 cornstarch to water) it makes this really weird substance that is hard if you put sudden pressure on it and a thick but liquid-type paste if you don't.

I made two colors, yellow and blue.  And no one is surprised.

I decided to try the "marbled" effect that I had seen on the blog, but that is the one thing I will say I didn't like.  It looked cool, but it meant that the food coloring was really concentrated at the beginning and it stained our skin a little.  Once it got mixed up, it was fine, so next time, I would mix it all in first.

And I actually had a reason for picking yellow and blue, besides that they are the best colors.  I thought Cricket might enjoy seeing how they mix together to make green.

I brought the two bowls into the empty tub where Brian had her.  She was more adventurous than usual and touched it pretty quickly.

I think she actually liked the way it felt, because she kept putting her hands in it.

She didn't even mind when I drizzled some on her leg!

Her favorite part, though, was when I got some in my hand and dripped it down on her from up high.

We couldn't believe how much she seemed to like it!  She even got it in her hair!

(I have to say, too, that Brian and I were equally fascinated by this stuff, and played in it quite a bit.)

It was really easy to clean up, because when you add more water to it, it just turns into a liquid, so it just washed right down the drain.  Cricket loved playing in the water, too.

Then we just gave her a quick bath and we were finished!  We all had so much fun, and she played with it for about thirty minutes!  I would definitely do this again, and amazingly, I think Cricket would, too!