What is the best way to play with oobleck? Try making this oobleck baking station – it’s one of the best outdoor activities for kids to enjoy. In this post, you’ll find the two-ingredient recipe for oobleck, how to play with oobleck, and a method for easily cleaning up that mess.
What is oobleck?
Oobleck is a non-Newtonian substance that is awesome.
It has properties of both a solid and a liquid – it oozes like a liquid and takes the shape of the container. But….it can break like a solid and hold objects on the surface.
No but seriously. Making an oobleck baking station might just be the best way we’ve ever played with oobleck… and that’s saying a lot from us.
And the wildest part of the whole thing: it’s just cornstarch and water.
RELATED: Looking for more outdoor activities for kids? Try this list of fantastic ideas for kids to try outside.
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Why make an oobleck baking station?
Playing with oobleck is such a fun sensory activity… But in my experience, it can be daunting to a child to be handed a sensory bin and have the onus for figuring out what to do fall solely on their shoulders.
Play is complicated.
Play is hard mental work.
When we just assume kids will “go play,” we are assuming they are ready to take on a big mental load.
Instead, giving kids a little parameter, guidance, and boost can exponentially help. It gives them an assist when we present something like a sensory bin with a little bit of support:
That’s the difference between handing kids oobleck to play with versus handing them an oobleck baking station to create with.
The supplies
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- Cornstarch
- Water
- Optional: food coloring
- Kitchen/baking supplies
This is a pretty basic list of activity supplies – you probably have all of these at home with you. Good activities don’t need complicated supply lists (in fact I feel like that’s a red flag: activities that need a lot of supplies are not the right activities for me).
The oobleck recipe
In a nut shell, you make oobleck by mixing two parts of cornstarch with on part water.
For this giant bin of oobleck, I did 4 cups of cornstarch and 2 cups of water.
I dyed the water with food coloring for fun.
Mix the cornstarch and water with a wooden spoon and trust me: you’ll know when you have oobleck.
It’s like the way you know about a good melon.
What my kids did with an oobleck baking station
This was such a fantastic oobleck sensory bin theme to have my kids play with.
I just tossed in a bunch of cooking utensils, stepped back, and let the kids get to work.
My kids are 6, 4, 2 and they went deep into imaginary play with this activity.
That’s always the mark of a truly good activity – when the child(ren) can modify and adapt and extend the activity beyond what we adults might see.
Is oobleck taste safe?
Kind of – cornstarch does have a warning on the label to not consume it raw.
If this is a concern for your family or child, you can bake the cornstarch for 15 mins at 250.
How do you clean up oobleck at the end?
Oobleck is surprisingly easy to clean up and dispose of. While it may look and feel gunky, oobleck is similar to gravy (cornstarch and liquid).
Do not just pour it down your drain: flood it with water first (a hose, sink or bath tub).
You can also leave the oobleck in the sun to harden and put it in the garbage.
Susie Allison, M. Ed
Owner, Creator
Susie Allison is the creator of Busy Toddler and has more than 2 million followers on Instagram. A former teacher and early childhood education advocate, Susie’s parenting book “Busy Toddler’s Guide to Actual Parenting” is available on Amazon.
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