Toilet Paper Mush

Okay, I know the name sounds a little iffy, but stick with me! This one was so much fun!! The original idea comes from Play Create Explore, and we had a great time with it! I honestly wasn't quite sure what to expect from it. The original post describes it as being like play dough with a mashed potato consistency. I read through the instructions and all the comments before I got going, and I was glad I did, because the recipe calls for Borax, which I would've blindly thrown in if I hadn't read in the comments that it is highly toxic if ingested. A bit more reading revealed that the Borax was only in there to act as a preservative, and if you're okay with your TP mush not lasting for days than you don't need to put it in. So I left it out. Here are the rest of our supplies all gathered together:

- 2 to 4 rolls toilet paper (I bought the cheap stuff from the dollar store for this project)
- 1 bar ivory soap
- warm water
- cheese grater
- large bowl or container

I tried to find anything  I could that would be fun to play with in the mush, but not knowing what it was going to be like made that tricky. The citrus juicer and the sieves were not much fun, but everything else was great.  

I've actually been wanting to do this activity for a while now, but I thought it might be more fun for Erik with a friend so we've been waiting until we could coax someone to come play with us. Erik's friend Cameron came and joined in the fun with us. He was a great helper when it came to unrolling the toilet paper!

 Once we got the paper all unrolled and the cardboard tubes out of the way we combined everything together into a big plastic bin. The original poster doesn't say how much water to use, but I ended up pouring in a full 2 quart pitcher of warm water. I imagine it would be slightly different depending on how much and what brand of toilet paper you used (we bought a 4-pack at the dollar store, so we used all four rolls of very thin/cheap paper). Mix it all together with your hands (a wooden spoon just doesn't cut it, believe me!) and have a ball!

This stuff would work great for an outdoor messy mock snowball fight (as long as it didn't get into anyone's eyes). Maybe we'll get some goggles and give it a try one of these days. 

He really did have fun with this, don't let this picture fool you. 

The texture of this stuff was really interesting. I expected it to be heavy and dense like wet toilet paper is, but the dissolved soap made bubbles as we played with it and it actually became a really neat foamy consistency. It looked really dense, so it was neat to scoop up a handful and be surprised by the airiness of it. When the kids started to get a little bored, we added in a bunch of food coloring and that got their attention for a little bit longer. Looking back I wish I'd put in several different colors, but we just did one. It would've been more fun to mix the colors around. Oh well, that just means we'll have to do it again!