Super Strong Snow Slime Recipe

This snow slime is super strong yet super stretchy, and it has the coolest texture! It’s almost puffy and only lightly sticky, making it really fun just to stretch and shape and squish in your hands. The secret ingredient is Insta-snow, and I’m excited to share my trick for getting it to work well in the slime.

This post contains links to Amazon.com. If you click on one, we will receive a small commission — at no additional cost to you — on anything you buy at Amazon for a certain length of time afterwards. Read our disclosure policy for more details.

I love that it more or less holds its shape as it gives into gravity slowly, and that we can stretch it super thin to make a pretend sheet of ice to play with toys on.

It was fun to go around the house and look for toys to play in the “snow”, like this LEGO Abominable Snowman mini figure. He looks right at home.

We’ve been playing with these penguin figures a lot lately, thanks to reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins and watching Spy in the Huddle. The snow slime held the shape of an iceberg long enough for this penguin to get a good look around.

I love stretching it super thin, too. The slime will tear apart like silly putty if you pull on it hard, but if you gently coax it, shake it, hold it up and let gravity do the work, the slime stretches and stretches until you can peer through it and see all the individual “flakes”.

Then, you can lay it down on the table and pretend it’s a sheet of ice. The penguins had fun sliding around their ice rink.

They did not enjoy being under the “ice” quite as much.

It looks so cool draped over toys — like they’re trapped in ice, or in a snow storm, or a even a snow globe.

I decided to see how far I could get the slime to stretch like that, and I managed to cover half my desk with this ice rink for a LEGO ice skater. (You can find out how to make the snowy pipe cleaner trees over at our other blog, Play Trains!)

I have one more idea for how to play with this fun, strong snow slime, so watch for that next week!

 

Super Strong Snow Slime Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp Insta-snow (I buy mine at Amazon.)
• Sta-flo Liquid Starch (I bought mine at Walmart.)
  • If you live outside the US, see Fun at Home with Kids’ post about an alternative to liquid starch for making slime that may be available in your location.
• 1 bottle Elmer’s No-Run Clear School Glue (5 fluid ounce bottle)
  • I like to have an extra bottle of glue when I make slime, in case I add too much liquid starch and need to fix it.

Note:

Before you begin, I recommend reading Fun at Home with Kids’ awesome post, How to Fix Slime that Didn’t Work Out. While it’s a guide to fixing failed slimes, it also is a great way to learn what to look for so that your slime turns out right the first time.

However, the Insta-snow absorbs the water from the liquid starch, which makes this slime behave differently from normal slime. So be prepared to trust my calls for patience at certain steps along the way.

Directions:

• Add the Insta-snow to a bowl. The trick with getting it play nicely in the slime is to pre-hydrate it with the liquid starch before adding the glue. Otherwise, it will take forever to add enough liquid starch to the slime to get it to behave properly.
• Pour a splash of liquid starch in with the Insta-snow and stir. If you’ve played with Insta-snow and water before, you might expect it to expand dramatically, but it won’t. Not immediately. It will look a bit crumbly and clumpy at first.
• Add one or two more splashes of liquid starch to the Insta-snow and stir, until it looks like the mixture looks liquidy, as in the photo below.

• Add the full bottle of clear glue and stir.
• If the slime is sticky at this point — and it probably will be — add another splash of liquid starch. My slime formed a big clump around the spoon and was sliding around in a small amount of liquid starch. (This turned out to be the right amount of both ingredients in the end.)

• Now, begin to knead the slime with your hands. It will be wet and stringy (but not sticky) for a long time. This normally indicates a slime with too much liquid starch, but don’t be tempted to open another bottle of glue just yet!
• Continue kneading and stretching and kneading and twisting together for several minutes. Drizzle in any remaining glue that pools in the bottom of the bottle and knead that in.
• Eventually, the Insta-snow will absorb enough of the liquid, and the texture will start to come together. Keep kneading until you can flatten it out, fold it over, and press it together, and it sticks together and forms one mass.
  • If you’ve been kneading for 15-20 minutes and the slime still seems too wet and stringy, try adding a small amount of additional glue. You may need to add more liquid starch later to balance it out.
• The more you squish and play with the slime, the more liquid the Insta-snow will absorb. It will become whiter, and fluffier, and generally more awesome.
  • If it gets to a point where it’s no longer very stretchy, and seems a bit too firm, work in some more liquid starch.

Storage

• Store the slime in an airtight container. Our first recipe has kept for months, but the texture has finally changed somewhat — it’s stretchier and a little stickier than the new stuff — so it was time for a replacement batch.
• As it sits, it will become clear instead of white. To return it to its puffy, white state, just knead it for a few minutes.
• The first time you store a batch, it may release bubbles of air as the Insta-snow fully hydrates.
• I added a little liquid starch the second time we played with our first batch, but since then, it hasn’t required any doctoring. My husband and I suspect that eventually, you get just the right amount of liquid in the mix, and the Insta-snow reabsorbs more of the liquid when you play with it, then releases it when it sits.

Safety Note

• Liquid starch contains the same chemical that is in Borax, the one that causes the reaction with the glue that makes the slime. So this is not a borax-free slime. The Insta-snow is also not safe for consumption. Always supervise children closely when playing with this slime, never allow them to eat it, and make sure they wash their hands immediately after playing with the slime.

More Winter Fun

For another fun winter sensory activity, check out Olaf’s Summer Dream, our portable small world and sensory bin inspired by Olaf’s song, “In Summer”, from Disney’s FROZEN.

MORE COOL SCIENCE ACTIVITIES

Bubbling Slime Science Sensory Tubs

Two-Color Oil-and-Water Discovery Bottles on Play Trains!

SIGN UP FOR MORE EPIC FUN!

I hope you will have fun playing with our snow slime! After a year and a half of blogging about train play at Play Trains!, we’re just getting started here at Epic Fun for Kids. I hope you’ll follow along with us from the beginning by signing up for our weekly emails. We’ll share our new posts and videos for the week and any other epic kid ideas we have to show you. You can also follow us on Pinterest, Facebook, and Google+ – and don’t forget to subscribe to our new YouTube channel!