Lately Miles has been using marbles in his play. He has been making soup, rolling them down tubes and ramps, and now adding them to Oobleck (cornstarch and water).
The neat thing about using marbles with a “non-Newtonian liquid” (It's viscosity changes depending on the stress or force applied to it.) is that the marbles will land on top of the Oobleck and then sink slowly in. This is also a great activity for fine motor development, because it is difficult to get the marbles out of Oobleck. He/we ended up scooping the mass into the strainer and then allowing it to drip off over night when he was done playing in the Ooblick.
There are many sites that get into the proportions for making the best Oobleck, but we just put in a container of cornstarch and then slowly added water until we had the right consistency. (If you add too much water you can pour it off.) We always add food coloring to our experiments. I don't really care if Miles hands are dyed for a day or two, but if you do you may want to mix in the color with a metal spoon. (Although putting this limit on it will surely take out some of the fun.) And while I recommend doing this over surfaces that can be easily wiped up if it gets in carpet simply allow it to dry and vacuum it up.
For a long time Miles was leery of playing in messy things, which is against my and Chris' very nature. Adding something that he is very interested in playing in (i.e. the marbles) allowed him to extend his comfort zone and try something new. It allowed him to build on his prior knowledge of how a marble should behave in liquids (We've used them in the bathtub.) and across solids. He was able to note that it is different, how it is different, and explore vocabulary that explains the difference.
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