If your kids love sensory activities, then they will love learning how to make sand slime! Sand slime has a similar texture to wet sand on the beach. Its stretchy texture, combined with the sand’s roughness, makes it ideal for fun at any time and one of my favorite slime recipes without contact solution!
Toddlers, preschoolers, and kids of all ages will enjoy experimenting with this new twist on one of our favorite slime recipes.
You won’t believe how simple it is to learn how to make sand slime and even turn it into a science experiment or sensory play idea.
Follow these directions and you’ll have the best sand slime recipe ever!
How to Make Sand Slime for Beginners
Read on to see how to make the very best sand slime and engage the creativity of your students.
If you’re curious about how slime is made, it’ is because making slime is a chemical reaction! When a cup of white glue mixes with a cup of liquid starch, it creates a chemical reaction, which you can read more about below.
Since this sandy color slime does contain borax, if your kids have a borax sensitivity, you may want to try our baking soda slime instead. You may also want to try these summer slime recipes.
Sand Slime Science
Slime is made when borate ions from boric acid in the laundry starch mix with the polymer chains in the white school glue (you can also use clear school glue), creating strong, but flexible bonds between the molecules in the glue and sodium borate.
This is the same process that happens when flexible plastic is made, just in a slightly different format.
What Happens When You Add Sand to Slime?
It may seem like adding sand to slime would make the slime more solid and less slimy, but in fact, the opposite happens!
The answer lies in the surface tension of the water in the slime. The water molecules on top of the liquid mass are attracted to each other and form a thin layer.
When you add sand to slime, it pushes through the existing water molecules and creates new bubbles of water that are also attracted to each other.
This leads to a decrease in surface tension and an increase in volume, which retains the slippery nature of slime.
How Do You Fix Sandy Slime?
If this is your first time making slime, you should follow along with our slime troubleshooting guide.
If you don’t want to waste a lot of ingredients, try mixing up a small batch first to make sure you won’t have to tweak it before you make the larger version.
If you find that your slime has become ruined with hair or debris, you can still fix your sand slime!
Soak the sand slime in a solution of water and detergent and then rinse with water.
The Best Materials for Making Slime
Here is what you need to make every basic slime recipe on STEAMsational!
Put the sand slime back into its container and add more borax or baking soda to remove any stickiness that emerged during the washing process.
How Do You Make Sand Slime Not Sticky?
Sand itself will go a long way toward producing a less-sticky slime. The molecules in the slime stick to the sand rather than sticking to carpet or clothing.
But if you find your slime is a bit too sticky, you can add baking soda for additional texture or add a little more borax solution or laundry starch to your slime to make it less sticky.
Can You Put Kinetic Sand in Slime?
If you don’t want to use regular sand for this slime recipe, or don’t have any, you can make sand slime with kinetic sand!
Follow the recipe below exactly as described and your slime will turn out perfectly!
More Basic Slime Recipes to Try
You can try some of these other easy basic slime recipes to get even more sensory play and fun that has similar benefits to kinetic sand slime with the type of slime recipes below!
- Summery and Fun Beach Slime Recipe
- How to Make Edible Taffy Slime
- How to Make Slime the Easy Way
- Neon Slime Recipe
Sand Slime Ingredients
Here is what you need to make this easy sand slime recipe! It’s just 3 ingredients!
Step By Step Directions to Make Sand Slime
Follow with these printable directions to learn how to make your very own sand slime from beach sand or kinetic sand!
How to Make Sand Slime
Discover how to make sand slime with only three ingredients! This sand slime resembles kinetic sand mixed with borax slime!
Materials
- Sand
- Elmer’s washable school glue
- Liquid laundry starch
- Kinetic sand (optional)
Tools
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Large bowl
- Airtight container
Instructions
- Ensure your slime is clean before proceeding. If you are using real beach sand, rinse it out before adding it to the slime.
- We put our sand in a colander and rinsed it with cold water for about two minutes. If you’re using craft sand or kinetic sand, you can skip this step.
- Add 5 ounces of clear glue, 1/2 a cup of sand, and 1/2 a cup of water to a large mixing bowl.
- Add 1/2 a cup of laundry starch to the sand and glue mixture and stir.
- Continue to stir and knead the sand slime until it is one cohesive ball and no longer sticky. This usually takes about five minutes.
Notes
Because of the sand, this slime sets up faster than others. But you’ll still want to stir it as much as possible to mix up the sand and make sure the starch reacts with all the glue.
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