Ghost mud, a sensory activity with toilet paper and ivory soap
Ghost Mud (also known as Clean Mud) is the most fun you can have with a bar of Ivory soap and a roll of toilet paper. This incredible homemade sensory dough is easy to make and it’s a wonderful sensory activity preschoolers.
Ghost mud smells fantastic, and it’s delightfully ooey and gooey when you squeeze it in your hands. It’s similar to play dough, but it’s softer and silkier. And did I mention how amazing it smells?
Yesterday I showed you how to do one of the coolest science activities ever, with a bar of Ivory Soap. If you missed it, you have to check it out! It’s just the craziest. All you need is a bar of soap and a microwave!
Normally, we make homemade laundry detergent with the results of the Ivory Soap Experiment, but we didn’t do that yesterday. We had some big-time fun with it! We used our expanded bar of soap to make a batch of ghost mud.
Ghost mud is an amazing sensory substance for preschoolers to play with. Along with our 2-ingredient cloud dough, our Elmer’s Glue slime, and our 2-ingredient Goop, it’s one of our absolute favourite sensory activities here in my daycare.
Making ghost mud is just as fun as playing with it. Your kids will have a blast helping you whip up a batch.
Ingredients for Ghost Mud (or clean mud)
What you’ll need:
- a bar of ivory soap
- a roll of toilet paper
- a cup of warm water
How to make ghost mud:
First, ask your kids to remove all of the toilet paper from the roll. This is pretty much an activity in itself:
Gather it all up and put it in a large basin (I use a storage container for this).
As for the soap, you can either grate it, or do the Ivory Explosion. If you do the Ivory Explosion, the soap gets quite papery and fragile as it expands, so you can simply crumble it up to use for your ghost mud.
Once you’ve grated or crumbled your soap, add it to 1 cup of very warm water, and mix until it gets mushy.
Now pour it over the toilet paper in the bin, and put the kids to work. You need to mush for several minutes to combine all of the paper and soapy water until you have a smooth, slippery, pulpy, mess.
For the first couple of minutes it won’t feel like it’s really turning into anything great, but be patient. Keep working it: gathering it together, and kneading it, and you’ll end up with a wonderful, slick, moldable dough. You can add a little water if it seems too dry, or if you want it a little sloppier.
I handed out spoons, scoops and bowls, and the Hooligans pretended they were serving up ice cream.
Want to see another fantastic way to use this stuff? Check out our pink and sparkly Fairy Mud and our “Frozen” Clean Mud!
More awesome, easy play ideas:
Homemade Giant Bubble Mix
Muddy Car Wash
Dinosaur Activity Bin
Garden Soup – sensory play
2-Ingredient Cloud Dough
Garden Soup
Easy Twirling Ribbon Sticks
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
