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This homemade slime recipe for kids is a fun thing to do this summer!

Amelia enjoys mixing things up and seeing how they work. Homemade slime is so easy to make, it is a fun project that doesn’t take much time.

I have done several recipes for this, but this one is very simple and our favorite.

Homemade Slime Recipe For Kids

Don’t forget to head to our instagram and follow along for more fun videos, tips and behind the scenes.

Also, we are sharing some science behind how this works below the directions so you can share with your kids how this works too!

Ingredients For Homemade Slime:

12 oz Elmer’s Glue
2 tbsp saline solution
1 1/2 tbsp baking soda
Glitter paint or Food Coloring (optional)

For Halloween: Use purple or black glitter paint, and add little spiders or anything Halloween. This is a fun DIY craft for October too.

Directions:

Pour glue into a large container.
Add in the baking soda and mix together with a large spoon.
Add in a few drops of food coloring if you want it to be colored or use a jar of paint. We love the colored glitter paint.
Add in the saline solution.
Mix into the slime until it forms together.
Continue working the slime until it loses most of the stickiness. It will turn into a slime texture that is more slick.

How Does This Homemade Slime Recipe Work?

There are dozens of varieties of homemade slime recipes. Some of them use borax for the borate ion, but contact solution is another option due to the ingredient boric acid.

We like this recipe because it comes together easy, doesn’t create as much of a mess, and the ingredients are easy to find!

Glue

All homemade slime starts with glue. We always use Elmer’s glue. Elmer’s glue is made of polymers called polyvinyl acetate (PVA), polyvinyl alcohol, and propylene glycol.

Contact Solution

Contact solution or saline solution is a liquid solution containing boric acid. The boric acid is key to creating homemade slime. The borate ions link the long polymer molecules so they can’t flow easily and freely like they do in liquid form.

Baking Soda

Baking soda, sodium bicarbonate, is added to homemade slime to help it firm up and not be as runny. While the boric acid links the polymer molecules, the baking soda helps firm the solution further. If you make the homemade slime without baking soda, it will be more runny. Since this recipe isn’t using the borax, the baking soda is helpful.

Paint or Food Coloring

The addition of paint or food coloring is just for fun. Amelia loves pink and glitter, so I went with this one. You can also add food coloring!

Water?

Some recipes also call for the addition of water. Water will thin out the slime and can make it more stretchy! We don’t typically use it, but if you want to play around with your slime. Try making a batch with a few tablespoons of water and see the difference in the texture.

Tips on Storing DIY Slime

After you make the slime and play with it, you can wrap it up in plastic wrap and use again and again. I have found it stores better in a plastic wrap versus Tupperware containers. As long as it doesn’t get air to it, it should keep for awhile.

Other Baking Soda Hacks

Baking soda is such a versatile product for your home. I purchase it in bulk and use it for all types of homemade cleaning. Check out our baking soda hacks post for more ideas on this.