How To Make A Super Bouncy Ball

Yes, you can make your own homemade bouncy balls for awesome science, chemistry, sensory play, and anytime activity with the kiddos. Bursting with color and glitter, this DIY bouncy ball recipe hits the nail on the head for a must-try slime making activity. Bouncy balls are a cool variation of our homemade slime, and everyone needs to try making homemade slime at least once. Our easy to make bouncy balls are perfect for every kid!

HOW TO MAKE A BOUNCY BALL!

HOMEMADE BOUNCY BALLS

Kids love to play with bouncy balls, but why not make your own! These borax bouncy balls (which is really the best way to make them) are a blast for kids to make because they also have a chance to learn about polymers.

Your homemade bouncy balls may not bounce quite like the store-bought ones, but they do provide tons of kid-approved satisfaction. Creating your own fun theme bouncy balls is the perfect anytime activity, group project, or classroom demonstration.

HOW TO MAKE A BOUNCY BALL

Your homemade bouncy balls use a variation of one of our five basic slime recipes. All our slime recipes are super easy to make for a fun activity anytime! We make slime all the time, and these have become our go-to favorite slime recipes!

To make your own borax bouncy balls you will use a variation of our Borax Slime recipe.

Where do I buy borax powder?

We pick up our borax powder in the grocery store in the laundry detergent aisle! You can also find it on Amazon, Walmart, Target.

Did you know that you can grow awesome crystals with a borax mixture as well? Check out our easy How To Grow Crystals.

THE SCIENCE OF BORAX BOUNCY BALLS (SLIME)

We always like to include a bit of homemade slime science around here! Slime is an excellent chemistry demonstration and kids love it too! Mixtures, substances, polymers, cross-linking, states of matter, elasticity, and viscosity are just a few of the science concepts that can be explored with homemade slime!

What’s slime science all about? The borate ions in the slime activators (sodium borate, borax powder, or boric acid) mix with the PVA (polyvinyl acetate) glue and forms this cool stretchy substance. This is called cross-linking!

The glue is a polymer and is made up of long, repeating, and identical strands or molecules. These molecules with flow past one another keeping the glue in a liquid state. Until…

You add the borate ions to the mixture, and it then starts to connect these long strands together. They begin to tangle and mix until the substance is less like the liquid you started with and thicker and rubberier like slime! Slime is a polymer.

Picture the difference between wet spaghetti and leftover spaghetti the next day. As the slime forms, the tangled molecule strands are much like the clump of spaghetti!

Is slime a liquid or solid?

We call it a Non-Newtonian fluid because it’s a little bit of both!

Did you know that slime aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)?

It does and you can use slime making to explore states of matter and its interactions. Find out more below…

BOUNCY BALL RECIPE

I always encourage my readers to read through our recommended slime (bouncy ball) supplies list before making these for the first time. Learning how to stock your pantry with the best ingredients is easy!

YOU WILL NEED:

3 tbsp Clear Elmer’s School Glue
1 tbsp Glitter
Food coloring (optional)
2 tbsp Borax Detergent
1 cup Water
2 spoons or craft sticks
Bowl

HOW TO MAKE BOUNCY BALLS

STEP 1: Combine borax and water. Stir until the Borax has dissolved.

STEP 2: In a separate bowl, combine glitter and glue until the mixture is consistent throughout.

STEP 3: Now you can go ahead and pour 3 globs of the glitter/glue mixture into the water/borax mixture.

STEP 4: Time to dig in with your hands. Begin kneading one of the glue mixture globs, working with one blob at a time.

STEP 5: Knead the material until the glue mixture glob becomes stiff enough to hold its shape.

STEP 6: Roll the slime glob in your palms to form a bouncy ball.

STEP 7: Rinse under cold running water to harden it. Time to play!

Make sure to wash your hands after making and playing with your bouncy balls. Wash all surfaces too! See slime safety notes here.

Note: These bouncy balls are essentially a super-thick slime, so they will “melt” or “deform” if left sitting on the counter. But, you can simply reform them when you are ready to play again. They will, however, dry out eventually and begin to crumble, but that’s when you know it’s time to make more.

CHECK OUT MORE FUN IDEAS TO TRY

HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE BOUNCY BALLS WITH KIDS!

Try more fun homemade slime recipes right here. Click on the link or on the image below.

No more having to print out a WHOLE blog post for just one recipe!

Get our basic slime recipes in an easy to print format so you can knock out the activities!