A great use for disposable diapers!

Know what these are?

Nope.  You're wrong.

They're actually the base material for the messiest experiment we've attempted in quite some time!  I'm an avid reader of a select few blogs.  One I love is The Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.  The writer, whom I have never met, seems to enjoy a lot of similar crafts and experiments and child-raising practices as me.  I even subscribe to her blog by email!  Anyway, her current showcased post is about favorite winter crafts.  I needed something to do this week, so I thought we'd give her "Making snow from diapers" a go!

We cut open the sides of disposible diapers and pulled out all the filling.  Thank goodness I am mostly using cloth, now, or this might have felt like a waste!

 

In case you're wondering, The Luvs brand diapers had almost NO filling.  Huggies had probably an adequate amount.  Target brand (Up & Up) were LOADED with the stuff!  No wonder they absorb so well!

The kids were really concerned because it didn't look like snow.  It looked like...well, crumbly paper or grainy cotton.

We added a bunch of water and mixed it together.

Have you ever wondered what the filler from the diapers looks like wet?  Wonder no more!  Here it is, all stuck to my hand and mushy.  It felt like a gel.  I didn't like it a bit!  (If you need more evidence that cloth is a good way to go, play with the disposable diaper filler for a while!)

When it was all mixed up it looked vaguely like snow.  It didn't feel like snow, though.  The kids put their fingers in and then were done.  They didn't like it a bit!

The instructions said to put it in the refrigerator or freezer until it was cold.  We tried the freezer first, but rather than start to feel like snow, it was freezing into a big diaper-gel ice-ball.  After 30 minutes or so it moved to the fridge and chilled nicely for a couple more hours.

I brought the sand and water table in.  The kids were so excited!  "Yay!  We're going to SORT THINGS!"  They were a little sad, much to my surprise, when I poured the snow into the table.  Just to make it more "science-y" we put fake snow in half and real snow in half.  Can you tell which is which?

We enjoyed comparing the feel of the two different "snows."  They certainly preferred real snow!  God knew what he was doing when he made snow from water instead of diaper fluff!

The real snow was much easier to mold into a "fort!"

Everyone agreed that when it was all mixed together you could hardly tell the snows apart!  (Little Lou was not happy about the mixing.  Things are supposed to be in their own respective places, you know!)

 

What a fun experiment!  Thank you, Crazy Woman, for this great idea!