by Barbie L.

So many great toddler crafts and activities involve dried goods from the pantry (macaroni necklaces, rainbow rice, homemade play dough, sensory play with beans, … the list goes on). However, many of these items are difficult to come by during the COVID-19 shutdown, so it’s hard to justify using them for crafts! Although there hasn’t been flour, beans, or rice in our local grocery store for some time, they have had cornstarch stocked over the last couple weeks, so we decided it would be safe to use a bit of it for play. However, to make sure we didn’t waste it, we stretched and reused the same cornstarch over as many different crafts and activities as we could!

Overview

1. Make Oobleck (Cornstarch goo)
2. Thin some oobleck to make constarch-based sidewalk paint
3. Make a sidewalk paint mosaic
4. Do a color mixing experiment
5. Dry some oobleck and make cornstarch-based play dough

Materials

• Cornstarch (3-4 cups to do all the activities)
• Water
• Food coloring (Only needed for paint)
• Cups (To hold paint); Optional: Muffin tin and/or Peri bottles
• Masking tape (Only needed for chalk paint mosaic)
• Lotion (Only needed for play dough)

Oobleck

Oobleck is a fascinating substance that is solid when you hit it or tap it quickly but melts into liquid if you sink your hand into it slowly. My preschooler played with it for hours! To make it, combine 1.5-2 parts cornstarch with 1 part water. See Instructables for a tutorial with more information. We made ours without food coloring as we planned to upcycle it into various colors of sidewalk paint (see next section).

Sidewalk Paint

We thinned some of our oobleck and added food coloring to make cornstarch-based sidewalk paint. The general rule of thumb is 1 part cornstarch to 1 part water, but if you’re thinning oobleck you just have to feel it out. If it’s thicker the colors will be more opaque when you paint them on the sidewalk; if it’s thinner you’ll be able to paint smoother, longer brush strokes. If you plan to do both sidewalk paint activities make extra paint in the primary colors.

Sidewalk Paint Mosaic

Separate different colors of sidewalk paint in cups, or in a muffin-tin (which is much harder to spill). To make the mosaic, use masking tape to delineate a pattern of triangles or other shapes, then instruct your kids to paint each shape a different color.

Once the paint is dry, peel away the tape to reveal an amazing-looking mosaic with sharp edges.

Color Mixing Experiment

Using a cup for each primary color would work fine, but we decided to make it fun and use peri bottles too. If you use peri bottles I recommend running the paint through a strainer before use to avoid clogs, especially if you make it from oobleck that’s been played with outside. We poured and sprayed paint all over our concrete patio to test out what would happen with each color combination. It actually looked kind of pretty when they were done.

Cornstarch Play Dough

We let our remaining Oobleck dry out, then we tried a couple different recipes for cornstarch-based play dough. I liked this super simple one from Artsy Fartsy Mama the best. There are only two ingredients, so it’s hard to go wrong: 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part lotion. It turned out super soft and smelled great! Also, especially since we were using dried Oobleck instead of fresh cornstarch having a two-ingredient recipe made it less finnicky: when it was too sticky we added a little more cornstarch; and, when it got a crumbly as lumps of cornstarch got integrated we put a bit of lotion on our hands to re-hydrate it. I recommend breaking up the dried Oobleck as much as possible and even sifting it before adding the lotion to eliminate lumps. We didn’t sift it and it took about an hour of play to work the lumps out our play dough. By the next day it was nice and smooth though!