What Not to Do With Oobleck

So I had this great idea to make some oobleck for the boys to play with.  Mr. One found the recipe in a book he read in school and has begged to make some for several weeks now.  I promised that we would make some when school was out.

I saw this awesome idea on Pinterest and thought the boys would love it.

Then I remembered we don't have a subwoofer.

So, the colors that they created with food dye looked amazing.  I figured we could do a little color mixing before playing with our slime.  (Yes, I did read the part in her post about the colors dying little hands gray for some time...)

I let them pick two colors and gave them a toothpick to swirl it around.  They liked watching the colors change and mix.  Mr. Three tried to add lots more color to his bowl, and I snatched the coloring away quickly, thinking I had averted a big mess.  Small victory.

I snapped a few pics of the swirling colors.  Mr. Four was enthusiastically grabbing at the camera, trying to get his hand in the bowl.  The other boys were calmly mixing and exploring.

Mr. Three stuck a finger in his bowl, saw it was bright blue and immediately wanted to wash his hands.  After insisting that he feel it, he put a hand in and was done and off to the sink to wash his blue fingers before you could blink twice.  The water in the sink was much more appealing to him, and he stayed there while the rest of his brothers played.

Then I let Mr. Four loose.  You have not seen a happier baby, grabbing fistfuls of the gooey, slimy liquid/solid and flinging it around the play mat I had set down to contain the mess.  He emptied his bowl, then set his sights on Mr. Three's abandoned bowl, as the older Mr.'s looked on in half-horror, half-amusement.  Well, red and blue do indeed make purple!

At this point, Mr. Four was having too much fun, and there was no stopping the train wreck, so I gave my unspoken consent (a look and a shoulder shrug) to Mr. One and Mr. Two.  Then, the three-man wrecking crew spent the next several minutes flinging, laughing, dripping, smashing and tasting (Mr. One dared Mr. Two, who took on the challenge after seeing Mr. Four's face full of goop). There were goopy feet, goopy hands, goopy walls and floors, and goopy, smiling faces.

At this point, I decided the easiest thing would be to let them outside and turn on the hose.  They were clean for about 2 seconds, when they discovered the mud forming beside the water table, and went straight for that.  Mr. Four was plucked from the mud (literally) then had a nice mid-afternoon shower, and the rest of the boys cleaned up outside.

I had to do some extra cleaning inside.  Luckily, none of the mess stained the walls or floors, and it cleaned up much easier than I feared it would.  Now, time will tell if the colors come out of their clothes.

Note to Self:  Next time we make oobleck, there will either be no food coloring involved and/or no Mr. Four involved.  It was worth doing once, but I don't want to have to deal with that level of mess for a while...