Edible Jello Slime (Fast and Easy Sensory Activity)

How to make edible Jello slime, taste-safe sensory play.

• Ages: Toddler, Preschool, PreK, Kindergarten
• Difficulty: Easy
• Learning: Sensory, States of Matter

Some slime is so cool it looks good enough to eat. And lucky for us there are lots of ways to make edible slimes!

This slime comes together in just a few minutes, uses common kitchen supplies, and is totally taste safe. These are big wins for doing sensory activities and specifically slime activities with kids.

Get your favorite flavor of Jello and let’s make some slime your kids will just adore. Here’s how to make edible Jello Slime.

Edible Jello Slime

• Ages: Toddler, Preschool, PreK, Kindergarten
• Difficulty: Easy
• Learning: Sensory, Slime Science

We had so much fun with this slime. Okay, usually kids love all slime. But this one smells so good and it is fun to not have to worry about the kids taking a little nibble of it.

We used this slime to create some great food-based dramatic play scenarios. And once you learn this simple method, you can use it in so many fun ways! (You can scroll down to the bottom to get a free printable version of this jello slime recipe.)

Supplies for Edible Jello Slime

This slime only needs 2 ingredients. Well, I suppose 3 because you need water. It’s that easy to put together! Here is what you need.

• 3 oz Box of Jello
• Cornstarch
• Water

How To Make Jello Edible Slime

This slime comes together very quickly, which is helpful when you have eager kids. And they can totally help make it!

Step 1: Put one 3 oz box of Jello mix into a bowl.

Step 2: Add 1 cup of cornstarch to the bowl and gently mix it all together.

Step 3: Now we start adding the water. Add about 1/4 cup warm water and start to mix. I added a total of 1/2 cup of water. The total amount of water you add depends on what texture of slime you want. A thicker slime needs less water, a runnier one needs more.

Tip: If your slime gets too runny you can add more cornstarch, little by little, to get back to a consistency you like.

Step 4: Play with your slime!

Safety

This is a pretty safe activity. All the ingredients are edible, so it’s okay if your child tastes the finished product. (Though I don’t recommend eating too much of it.)

Be careful with the cornstarch, as you don’t want to inhale it or get it in your eyes.

Storage

You can store this slime in an air-tight container. We kept it in the fridge for about a week before it was played out.

Tip: If your slime gets too dry or crumbly you can always add a little bit more water.

Clean Up

Once you are done with your slime it can be thrown out in the trash.

When you are cleaning up from making the slime make sure to put as much residual cornstarch in the trash as possible. You don’t want to pour any extra down the sink because it can clog your drain.

All other spills can be cleaned up with warm water.

---

Here are more edible slime recipes to try!

---

The Science of this Jello Slime

So how does this slime come together? To understand a bit about what is happening in this activity we need to remember a little science.

Slime Science

You can get more detail about how slime works by checking this out: The Science of Slime.

The short version is that slime works as a result of cross-polymer linking. Polymers are long chains of repeating molecules. In Jello powder, these polymer chains come from the gelatin and sugar present.

In the presence of an activator, these chains can link up, which is called cross-polymer linking. This linking is what gives slime its unique oozing properties where you can move it around, but it still sticks together.

What’s a great activator for this type of linking? You guessed it, cornstarch. The cornstarch we added helps give the slime that cross polymer linking that makes slime so unique. It can ooze and move around, taking different shapes as liquids do. But when we handle it and add some force to it, the slime feels harder and maintains its shape a bit, like a sold.

Other good activators are liquid starch and borax. Make sure to use borax free slime recipes when making edible play slimes though.

(Note: You can use sugar free Jello to make this slime as well. While it does not contain sugar, it contains sweeteners that behave the same way as sugar for slime purposes. Using sugar-free Jello can help the slime be a little less sticky too.)

Non-Newtonian Fluids

Slime is a Non-Newtonian Fluid. This means that it behaves differently depending on what kind of forces are applied to them. When you gently manipulate the slime and don’t add a lot of pressure to it, it acts more like a liquid. But when you squeeze and apply a hard force, it acts like a solid.

Non-Newtonian Fluids are unique substances because of these special properties. Another common example is oobleck. This is made from just cornstarch and water. If you slowly press down on an oobleck your finer will gently slide through, like a thick liquid. But if you press down hard and fast on it, it will feel hard like a solid.

(You can learn more about ooblecks by clicking here. Also, try making oobleck stress balls!)

Sensory Learning

Slime is amazing for sensory play. Sensory activities encourage children to use their senses to understand the world around them.

You can learn why sensory play is so important here: The Big Benefits of Sensory Play. And there are ways to boost your child’s learning while you do this activity.

The easiest way to boost sensory learning while playing with slime is to just keep up the conversation. Describe how the slime looks, feels, smells, tastes. This all adds to children’s vocabulary and understanding of how their world works.

Dramatic Play

This sort of slime is excellent for dramatic play, particularly food-based dramatic play. By this, I mean playing pretend with themes like restaurant, chef, even just play-acting cooking at home.

Having a material to play with that you can really eat a little of adds to the fun and realism. But you don’t have the same level of work to make actual food to play with. Since it is slime and you probably only have a couple of colors, the imagination part is still key.

One of my favorite ways to use this slime was to play pasta slime. Red slime, pasta noodles, and we had a whole restaurant going.

Edible Slime Made From Jello

Edible slime is the best, and this is a favorite. (Though I think I say that about all the slimes that we make.) It was so easy to make and gave us so many fun play ideas. Plus we got to talk about some science while we played!

So when are you going to make this slime?

---

Let’s find your next fun activity!

---