Water Beads

They are all over the internet on sites discussing children's activities. I couldn't find any locally so broke my internet shopping ban and ordered a few packets - they were $1.25 each.

K pours a packet of the tiny blue beads into a bowl with 1 litre of water.

 They start off incredibly small. The instructions said they expand to full size after 4-8 hours.

After 4 hours, the beads are about the size of marbles. They feel incredibly soft and delicate. They are mostly translucent and the light shines through them. Some are tinted blue, and others are clear. 

After 8 hours, all but a tiny amount of the water had been absorbed, leaving a bowl of almost jelly like balls.

With a few props, K starts to explore. The balls are bouncy, like to roll, and do pop/squish when you squeeze them too hard.

They are fun to scoop and move from container to container - they bounce around the bowl when you drop them in like excited bundles of energy just waiting to escape.

K practised some fine motor skills by scooping them into muffin tins whilst trying not to spill any. We also tried to scoop them up with a wooden spoon which was very tricky - they were slippery little suckers.

 A small number of beads grew larger than the others.

On Sunday we opened the coloured packet.

You can see the size difference now between the blue beads and the coloured ones.

After a few minutes, the beads begin to expand and cover the bottom of the bowl.

 We find some animals to add to the play. We talk about the word camouflage with K.

A few hours later, we have a rainbow of colours. The beads take on different shades depending on the colours they are sitting on and around. When we tried to separate them into their individual colour, we only found 5 specific shades. There are no greens for example, though some of the beads above look greenish.

Kristen had been waiting all day for the coloured beads to grow so that she

could mix the two bowls together.

They feel so slippery - a real sensory experience for little kids and big.

Again, every now and again a super big bead is found in the mix.

Apparently the water beads will last for few days and gradually shrink back to their original size. We will keep playing with these ones this week and see how they go. I have a few more water bead ideas to explore and a few more packets up my sleave.