I just posted about making play dough as a Christmas gift for your kids. You can do the same with the ingredients to make slime. I will warn you, however… slime is NOT nontoxic, at least not with the recipe I have.

2 cups water
1-1/4 cup Elmer’s glue
food coloring
1/3 cup hot water
1 tsp Borax

Thoroughly mix 2 cups water with glue. Add food coloring as desired.

Mix hot water and Borax. Stir into glue and water mixture, removing slime as necessary. You may have to make an extra batch of the hot water and Borax to make the entire mixture into slime.

The slime will be rather tacky at first. The more you work it, the less tacky it will be.

To give this as a gift I would suggest giving the kids just the glue and tell them it’s for a special project. Packaging up the rest of the ingredients just wouldn’t work for me.

Slime is rather messy of course, but if you clean up promptly it’s not likely to stain. At least it hasn’t for me.  Don’t let it near carpet as it’s not so easy to clean up there.  Tile floors are a much better choice for this one.

As with the play dough, keep it sealed up and it will last a while. Your patience with whatever mess they create may be another matter.