Rainbow Slime

These past two weeks, the kids and I have been working a lot with rainbows. We’ve been exploring their symbolic significance, their beauty, and their order, but we’re still working on getting the colour sequence correct so I thought something a bit more hands-on might help them remember and whipped up some rainbow slime.

I had four preschoolers that day, so I decided to make 1 cup of each colour of slime so that they could all have a few opportunities to roll their own rainbows.

(Read more about The Slime Book and what it contains here.)

Oh and one last thing before we get to the recipe, I had to tell you that it’s finally here! I wrote The (Ultimate) Slime Book oozing with over 50 pages of stretchable, squishy sensory fun – including a year of seasonal slimes, edible slimes and unique ways to play with slime. Click here to get more details.

For each colour of the rainbow slime I mixed:

• 1 cup clear glue
• 1/2 cup liquid starch
• 2 drops food colouring
• generous sprinkle of glitter
• splash of water (I rinsed the bowl between each slime and just didn’t dry out the bowl which was enough)

Knead the slimes for at least a minute to check their consistency as it will change (just like homemade play dough does) with a bit of play.

If you’ve never played with slime before, don’t worry about a sticky disaster! If it’s made properly, it will be stretchy and gooey but not sticky. Fun at Home With Kids has a great troubleshooting guide if yours isn’t looking right.

I ripped small amounts of slime in each colour for each of the kids and showed them all how to assemble their own rainbow — and how pretty and stretchy it would be!

They immediately set to work rolling out “snakes” of each colour and attaching the colours in order – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple.

I was honestly shocked at how well most of them remembered the order of the rainbow during this activity, especially considering the paintings made just the day before were a bit more creative in their colour orders! It just goes to show you the power of sensory play and how sensory stimulation can help with deep semantic learning.

After they had assembled their rainbows, they stretched, squished, poked, snapped, and flattened their rainbow slime. Eventually they all ended up with giant rainbow slime balls… which were pretty for about two minutes until they turned into a glittery, brown slime ball. Luckily, I had made enough slime that the children were able to make three more rainbows before we moved on, and we still have a bit of slime left over!

Left Brain Craft Brain has a cute glow-in-the-dark slime recipe which would be a fun twist on this activity if you could get the paint that she recommends in all 6 colours!

We loved playing with our rainbow slime, I hope your kids will, too!

For more fun slime recipes, check out our squishy (secret ingredient) slime or our frozen snow slime.