Homemade Bouncy Balls That Glow

Some of you may be familiar with the creative glowing RAINBOW activities and play recipes we have shared over the last few months. Some of my favorites have been glowing rainbow eruptions, glowing rainbow water beads, and glowing rainbow rice. Today, we are adding a simple and fun play recipe to the glowing RAINBOW collection.

How to Make
Glowing RAINBOW Bouncy Balls

Play Recipe- How to make your own glowing bounce balls

A Play Recipe from Growing a Jeweled Rose
{For all the best kids activities follow Growing a Jeweled Rose on Pinterest and Facebook}

Making glowing RAINBOW Bounce Balls is a simple activity, and my girls had a lot of fun testing them out on varying surfaces. To make Glowing RAINBOW Bounce Balls you will need to first make 6 separate balls, one in each color of the rainbow.

To Make Each Ball Combine: (affiliate links provided)

1/2 Tsp of Borax
4 Tbsp of Corn Starch
4 Tbsp of warm water

Combine in a small bowl, mixing until all ingredients are dissolved

In a separate Bowl Combine:

1 Tbsp white glue
1 Tsp Fluorescent or Glow in the Dark Paint

Mix well until the paint is completely blended into the glue. If you have homemade glow in the dark glue on hand you can also use that and skip the mixing.

Once the ingredients of both bowls are well mixed combine the two bowls. Allow the ingredients to react by themselves for a minute before stirring them. As you stir a sticky hard, slimy material will form.

Take the material and continue to work it with your hands, rolling and shaping it into a ball

As you roll the material it will lose it's sliminess and become dry and rather hard, yet still moldable

Once you have formed 6 separate balls, break them apart. We broke each ball into 6 pieces to make 6 RAINBOW bounce balls

Take the 6 pieces and work the varying colors together. We stretched and pulled them into a RAINBOW before rolling them together to form our bouncing balls. The stretching and pulling was very FUN!

Once our balls were made the girls had lots of fun experimenting to see what surfaces the balls bounced best from. They had lots of fun playing & exploring with the glowing bouncy balls!

Notes about the bouncing balls:

The material of the bouncing balls is very similar to slime only thicker. The balls lose their shape if left to sit.
Placing your bounce ball material in the refrigerator before playing helps the balls to hold their shape longer.
These balls are different from store bought bouncing balls. They do not bounce nearly as high nor do they bounce on all surfaces, but a big part of the fun is the experience of making the balls & experimenting with them.
When play time is over you can store your bounce ball material in a zip-lock bag in the fridge for future play. Next time you are ready to play just pull out the material and and re-form it to make bounce balls
The bounce ball material is also fun to play with in other ways. It is essentially a thick slime. It can be used as a sensory material in it's own right, and GLOWS BRIGHTLY which is always a hit with kids.
Adults should handle the borax and/or closely supervise children. Borax is not meant for consumption and should be kept out of the reach of small children who may be tempted to taste. The same rule applies to the borax bounce ball material. Please use your own judgement to determine if this activity is suitable for your child.

Other Activities You Might Enjoy:

Rain Cloud in a Jar Galaxy Dough Spray Chalk Recipe