* cornflour
* water
As with so much I make, I have no specific quantities for this gloop, I simply put the cornflour in a bowl and added water a bit at a time until it was thick and gloopy when picked up. Cornflour is absolutely magical stuff as it is a non-Newtonian substance - that means it doesn't act like a normal liquid, and when force is applied to a cornflour and water mix, it becomes rock hard. This makes it so much fun to play with! In the bowl, it looks like a liquid and acts like a liquid. Try and scoop it up and it goes rock hard. Once you eventually get it onto the spoon it will gloop off...only to stop flowing half way and break off. Lots and lots of fun!
Now, this was a risk. As I've mentioned before, Isabelle isn't a big fan of weird textures so I didn't know if she would like this at all, despite
the fact that she has actually played with it before. I put the bowl on our tuff spot and sat down to play, letting her watch. At first, she whined, but after showing her how much fun it was she came round and got very excited about watching it. She insisted Simon come over too and hey sat down together. He scooped it and I scooped it, and we showed her how it falls and breaks. She was perfectly content to sit and watch.
After a while, she did take the spoon and other utensils we had out and poke at it herself, and she did even touch some which had splattered out onto the tuff spot. It wasn't a lot of play, and it wasn't for long, but I think she did really well considering how unsure of it she was. I think we will have to do this quite often to allow her to get used to the texture of the substance so she can start to explore it more and get 'into' the activity.
Simon and I love this activity! We are a little bit (or a lot) geeky at heart, and we love science, so the non-Newtonian properties of the gloop absolutely fascinate us! That's another reason to make sure we play with this a lot in the future.