Our latest adventure in slime is all about Valentine’s Day and how to make floam slime! Here we show you how to make a classic floam slime with favorite Valentine’s Day colors and send it off with the kids as a candy free treat! Why buy floam slime when you can make your own slime Valentines!
HOW TO MAKE FLOAM SLIME FOR CANDY FREE VALENTINES!
VALENTINES SLIME
Give a little love, that is slime love for Valentine’s Day! Or just have a super lot of fun with your kids this winter making floam slime. We love making slime for the different holidays and special occasions like this one! I am a sucker for Valentine’s Day, so of course I am a sucker for creating fun Valentine’s Day theme slime.
DIY FLOAM SLIME
All of our holiday, seasonal, and everyday theme slime recipes use one of our recommended slime recipes that are super easy to make! We make slime all the time, and these have become our go-to favorite slime making recipes. This floam slime recipe below has one special ingredient added, tiny foam balls.
Floam slime is easy to make, but it’s important that you read the directions, use the correct ingredients, measure accurately, and have a little patience if you don’t succeed the first time. Remember, it’s a recipe just like baking!
Also check out our original and popular floam slime recipe!
THE SCIENCE BEHIND OUR VALENTINE FLOAM SLIME
We always like to include a bit of homemade slime science around here, and that’s perfect for exploring chemistry with a candy corn theme. 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 the science behind the slime? 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…
When you add the borate ions to the mixture, it 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! Read more about slime science here!
CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR FREE PRINTABLE VALENTINE STEM PACK!
VALENTINE’S DAY FLOAM SLIME RECIPE
This floam slime is made with our favorite liquid starch slime recipe. Now if you don’t want to use liquid starch as your slime activator, you can absolutely test out one of our other basic slime recipes using saline solution or borax powder.
INGREDIENTS FOR FLOAM SLIME:
- 1/2 cup PVA Washable White School Glue
- 1/2 cup Water
- 1/4 cup Liquid Starch
- 1 cup Polystyrene Foam Beads (white or red)
- Food Coloring
- Heart Containers {can also use condiment containers}
- Bowl, Spoon, Measuring Cup
We made three batches of our Valentine’s Day floam recipe and it filled 18 of our Valentine’s Day containers. This slime makes a great treat to hand out if you don’t want to give out candy this year! Just check with your school first! You could even add our printable slime labels for them.
HOW TO MAKE FLOAM SLIME
STEP 1: Start by mixing the glue with the water in a bowl. Mix well.
STEP 2: Next add food coloring and combine.
You can experiment with how many beads you choose to add, we added the whole package but the fun is in creating your own. Although your foam beads are colored, you will still want to add food coloring to match the beads.
STEP 3. Mix in the foam beads. A good ratio is anywhere from a 1 cup to 2 cups or slightly more depending on how you want your foam slime to feel.
Do you want it to still have a good stretch? Or do you want it to be thicker and squishy? In general, if your mix-in is light weight, you will want to use more of it. Experiment to find your favorite amount.
STEP 4: Add the liquid starch and mix well.
You will see that the slime forms immediately as you add the starch to the glue mixture. Give it a good stir and pretty much all of the liquid will be incorporated.
I highly recommend keeping your slime away from furniture, rugs, and kids’ hair! In our house slime play stays at the counter or table. Here is how to get slime out of clothes and hair!
VALENTINE’S DAY FLOAM PLAY
Kids can add cookie cutters for fun play. They can also mix and match the colors and swirl them together. If you let the slime spread out a bit on a tray, you can actually cut out slime hearts with the cookie cutters! If you let them dry {flipping them over after a day}, you have a little craft!
MORE FUN VALENTINE ACTIVITIES
MAKE FLOAM SLIME FOR VALENTINE’S DAY
Click on the image below or on the link for more awesome Valentine slime recipes.
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