Cutting the Snotty Gak

Gak, Goo, Obleck, slime, silly putty what ever you have known it as, we've never made it before......

So here goes -
You can find a good detailed recipe here : homemade-kids-gooey-gak
But it is so simple & easy to make, I let Dimples do it all on his own.

Using white craft glue, he poured the whole container into a bowl & mixed it with 1 1/2 cups of warm water. Our first attempt we added blue food colour & it turned out so vibrant, then we tried one with black (the texture was much better but it looked like snot)

while Dimples was mixing through the water, glue & colour, I boiled the jug & dissolved a teaspoon of borax in about half a cup of hot water, then i put it in for him.
Its really quite science like, as soon as it swirls through your mix you can see it separate then as you mix it it gets gooey.

This is where it gets fun, I asked Dimples to then mix it with his hands, with no hesitation he squeezed, kneaded and squished it around until it was no longer liquid at all.  It was gak!  Snotty looking Gak.

He loved the stuff, I gave him a pair of scissors & the cut so well through the gak, I think practising with scissors is made more fun using the gak but it seems to work better as well.

Dimples used his scissors to slice a long stringy piece of gak, it was easier for him to hold as he was working on his fine-motor cutting skills, trying to manipulate the scissors in the right direction to cut the "worm" into "baby worms" -
When the scissors cut he can see clearly the slice, it goes through easily whether the scissors are plastic or blunt or safety ones, where as sometimes the kiddy scissors struggle with paper.
And of course there is the sensory aspect of it, it feels soft and squishy & cool on the fingers.
The science of it, the way it moves blends, breaks, the way it mixed, the way it sinks & flattens.
To sum it up, we think its lots of fun & is an interesting thing to play with.

Dimples used it like play doh with his play doh toys, he cut through it for a long time, he used his knife & fork & pretended it was a slimy dinner and he just played about stretching & hanging it around watching it grow