Fun Craft for Kids: Fish in a Bag Slime

I have a silly and fun little craft idea that is perfect for summer.  Kids love slime, at least mine do, and it is so simple and cheap to make.  Absolutely perfect for hot summer afternoons or for rainy days.  There is a new Finding Dory movie coming out June 16th and these would be so cute to make after catching that movie! fish coloring pages

I try to have a bit of quiet time on summer afternoons to get housework and blog stuff done and making the kids a bag of slime is perfect to keep them entertained.  This summer I am trying hard to come up with a lot of ideas like this for quiet time because I really want to start listening to some French language CDs for kids that I found at the library.

So when my 8 year old came home begging for a fish one day, I had an idea to create a fish in a bag for her from slime. (No chance I am getting her a real fish until she can actually pick shoes up off the floor and turn homework in on time.)

This is super, super simple to do and so fun!  I made these and set them out to photograph in the morning and the kids were begging to take them to school.  I even caught my husband giving the bags a poke when he thought I wasn’t looking.  (I am always looking darling!  Eyes in the back of my head you know.) ever free coloring

So here is how you can make your own cute slime fish in bag.  Give this a shot- the kids will love it for summer vacation.

Supplies Needed:
- Plastic fish (or mermaids or sharks or turtles)
- Liquid Starch
- Elmer’s Glue (I used blue glitter glue)
- Treat bags  (mine were plain bags but the shaped treat bags look like a fish bowl!  perfect!)
- Twine or ribbon

To make the slime you can use liquid starch or borax.  If you have borax on hand, find a recipe here for borax slime. Either way works great and actually one of my bags was with borax and one with fabric starch so you really won’t see a huge difference.  I think the fabric starch is just slightly easier to use but gives the slime a slightly stickier consistency that stretches better. The Borax seems to have a bouncier consistency. Please note Borax is a cleaning agent and should not be handled by children.

I am providing detailed directions for slime but not to worry.  This comes together really quickly and is very simple to make.

How to make slime

Add 1/4 cup of water to a bowl.  Next add one container of clear glue or glitter glue to your bowl (about 1/2 cup or basically the entire 6 oz container of glue). Stir very briskly or use a whisk.  Stirring gently won’t incorporate the water into the glue- you don’t want the water to remain separate as you can see above.  Stirring with a fork or whisk will bring both ingredients together.

If you use a clear glue or white glue you might add food coloring, watercolor paint or glitter to your mixture.  I used a blue glitter glue so I skipped this step. Stir well to get the color you want.

Now add 1/2 cup liquid starch to your mixture and again stir well to incorporate.  After stirring I like to let it sit for maybe 5-10 minutes and that allows the rest of the water to be absorbed and it also seems to harden the slime up just a bit to make it easier to handle.

Knead the slime with your hands until it feels bouncy and stretchy.  I placed the slime in my treat bag in a ball.  The slime will mold to a big blob at the bottom so I placed the fish in the slime in the front of the bag and on the top after putting the slime in the bag.  Tie with a ribbon and present your fish in a bag 🙂

So fun right?

PS:  I ordered these fish awhile back for another project and just got the ones that were cheap and looked cute.  Mine came with these creepy evil red eyes though.  I just used a Sharpie to color in the creepy evil eyes and now they are happy fish