Dish Soap Silly Putty

This is quite possibly the EASIEST silly putty recipe ever! And you probably have all of the ingredients in your kitchen already, which is a huge bonus! After we made shaving cream play dough last week, we were curious what other liquids you can mix with corn starch to get a fun dough-like consistency. So after a little Pinterest searching, I found out that you can make dish soap silly putty, and we were all set for another fun experiment.

The full printable recipe is at the end of this post, but here’s what you’ll need:

• Dish soap
• Corn starch

That’s it! I can’t believe how simple it is!

I modified this recipe from the one found at Creative Playhouse. You can also check out Smart School House and Paging Fun Mums to see how their dish soap silly putty turned out.

The colour of your silly putty will depend on the type of dish soap you use. If you use green dish soap, like we did, it will have a greenish tinge to it. If you use clear dish soap, it will be white. And so on.

Add the liquid dish soap to the corn starch.

Mix it together with a spoon. If it’s too wet, add more corn starch. If it’s too dry, add more dish soap.

Just experiment with it until you find a consistency you like. This next picture is with a level 1/3 cup of cornstarch. We enjoyed letting it slowly drip off the spoon, but we found it had a much better dough consistency when we added more corn starch.

This is what the texture was like with some extra corn starch added. It slowly oozed through our fingers as we held it:

You can also try to make shampoo silly putty. You’ll just have to experiment to get the right amounts. Start with the corn starch, and slowly add the shampoo until you reach the right consistency.

This stuff was soft and squishy. And since it’s mostly liquid and corn starch, it also had that puzzling texture of not-quite-a-liquid and not-quite-a-solid. It was pretty cool to see how it behaved when you squeezed it or let it sit on the counter.

Once you make this silly putty, it only lasts about an hour before it dries out. You can add more soap to extend its life a little, but at the end of the day, it will need to be thrown out. Which is kind of a relief for me, since the last thing we need is more kid clutter!

Print

3.25 from 4 votes

Dish Soap Silly Putty

Whip up a batch in less than 5 minutes using only two simple kitchen ingredients!

Prep Time2 minutes mins

Total Time2 minutes mins

Materials

• 1/4 cup Dish soap
• 1/3 cup slightly heaping corn starch

Instructions

• Put the corn starch in a small bowl.
• Slowly add the dish soap to the corn starch.
• Mix together using a spoon.
• If it's too wet, add more corn starch. If it's too dry, add more dish soap.
• When it gets too hard to stir, use your hands to kneed the rest together.

This dish soap silly putty is so easy! You can whip up a batch in less than 5 minutes using only two simple kitchen ingredients. When you are all done, just wipe everything up with a wet cloth. Since it’s going to leave behind some crumbs of dish soap and corn starch, it will have the added benefit of getting your counters sparkly clean in the process!

If you’re looking for more fun kids activities, check out our homemade puffy paint. It’s one of the most popular posts on the whole blog and it’s sooooooo much fun!!