Flubber Blunder

As I said I was going to do on Wednesday, yesterday the kids and I attempted to make flubber…. It could have ended better. Wednesday night I went out to the store to pick up the borax and glue. I found the glue but could not for the life of me find borax. I looked in the laundry isle, the dish washing isle and a few other random isles just in case. I even asked someone that worked there and they sent me back to the laundry isle saying if they had it that’s where it would be. It appeared that Wegmans did not carry borax, so I quickly  looked up substitutes for borax. I found that corn starch and baking soda can be used as substitutes for borax. I knew there was a chance that the chemical reaction wouldn’t happen without the borax but I was willing to try.

All ready to start

Come Thursday morning I got everything for our project ready. Penny and Jude were so excited to make the flubber. Like I said I was going to do, I had Penny help me mix the first bowl of ingredients and Jude helped me with the second bowl. Then we poured the glue and food coloring mixture in the first bowl into the second bowl which had the baking soda and hot water in it. Nothing happened. No chemical reaction occurred and we were standing there mixing a bowl of pink watered down glue. It wasn’t my finest moment as a creative nanny.

Thinking on my feet I quickly said to the kids “Oh man it didn’t work! Oh well let’s put it in ziplock bags and squish it.” And so with a new plan in place I got the watery pink glue into double ziplocks as quickly as I could. I made a big deal out of how cool it was going to be to squish the stuff around in the bags. They played with the stuff for about ten minutes before Penny realized that it wasn’t really that fun. Luckily she had a great idea, playdough! I brought out the playdough and even pulled out some fall themed cookie cutters to enhance the fun, and they were off! They played with the playdough for almost an hour and I got my wish and had some time to do some homework!What did I learn from this experience? When you are trying to make flubber or anything similar to flubber you actually need to have the correct ingredients to cause the chemical reaction. I told my best friend who is also a nanny about my failed attempt and she simply laughed at me saying of course I couldn’t use baking soda instead of borax. I guess when it comes to the science side of nannying I don’t know everything yet. I am sorry I can’t say whether or not the flubber recipe that I linked in my last post is good or not. Perhaps the kids and I will try the recipe again sometime, when I actually can find borax.