School Planning Thwarted :: Part 2

How can a family with four children possibly function in a home with only ONE egg of Silly Putty?

You're right--it simply can not, I've found.

It started when one of the kids was playing with it and made a pointed statement, "You can't have the Silly Putty yet. I haven't played with it very long."

After a while of listening to their conversation about how much play time is sufficient and nothing getting resolved, I come into the picture. I start talking about the importance of sharing, world economics of supply and demand, telling them what I used to do with Silly Putty (pat it onto the Sunday funnies and make an ink transfer), then realize my talk is not getting us anywhere.


Then, out of the blue, I lose my wits and say something committal like, "Maybe we should figure out how to make some more." The kids light up. The rest is history. And, once again, I temporarily ignore my school planning.

Instead, we dug up some glue and Borax and made our own silly putty.

Luckily, we had a box of Borax handy. Why? I can't recall why, exactly, I have it. I don't use it as a laundry booster.

Maybe at the grocery story, I had a clairvoyant moment foreshadowing this day when I'd be in a desperate search to keep my kids content and threw the box in my cart.

After visiting Death Valley last fall, Borax holds an all-new meaning and understanding for the kids (who are the ones who remembered we even had some).

Death Valley = Home of the 20-Mule Borax Teams = deathly hot = 116-degrees-at-the-end-of-September-HOT.

This is the face I got after I told MK that I thought this blob looked like female reproductive organs. NOTE: If you don't want to be reminded of various innards, you may want to tint your silly putty something besides this internal-organ-pink that we made.

Anyway, those poor prospectors out in Death Valley probably set out to find gold or silver and strike it rich but only found a pit of...borax--in one of the hottest places on earth.

Little did they know how valuable their efforts in that vast and arid desert would be to my family today. Today, I LOVE Borax!

This reminds me of another internal organ, but I'll spare you this time.

Oh, look. There are signs of my never-ending school planning on the floor.
A little time making putty = a lot of time having fun!

After the kids noticed some non-Newtonian properties with the silly putty, they reminded me of this video they saw a while back showing how you can run across a pool of a corn starch and water, or stand still and sink in it.

I love it when unplanned science happens, even if it's at the expense of a little school planning.