Water Beads Surprise!

Water beads are new to us. I’ve seen them before of course, I am on Pinterest a fair bit and not a day goes by without a sensory water bead pin popping up! With the summer holidays on the horizon, I bought a few bits and bobs for the kids to enjoy over the break and a bag of water beads was one of my smallest and cheapest purchases, a random addition to my shopping basket. It was time for the water beads surprise!

So what’s the surprise? Just how much they fascinated my kids and how long they occupied them for. It was amazing. It will be repeated again very soon!

I got them out at 8am, gave each of the children a tub each, and popped a layer of water beads into it. We then poured water all over them and they watched. I didn’t tell them what the beads should do, so they had fun guessing with each other what they might do next. Within ten minutes they realised that they had grown.

water beads

The fascination had begun, so they kept checking on them and they could not stop touching them! They go from teeny beads to these bumpy, squidgy beads pretty quickly. The kids describe this stage as ‘furry’!

water beads growing

Until they are fully hydrated and become large beads, soft, gel-like and ‘blobby’ apparently!

water beads hydrated

After they’d grown, the games commenced. Sorting games using spoons then ladles, counting games, colour races, imaginary play – you name it, the kids played it. They are so versatile and can be used in lots of different ways. The children made up so many ways to play with them, it was amazing to see something so simple keep them busy for so long. This was set up on the table for them all day and they kept coming back to it, and I’d say they put hours into it, especially Boo.

If you’ve not tried these before, I can definitely recommend them. I ordered ours from Amazon, and they were less than £2 for hundreds of water beads Money well spent!

Do your kids enjoy playing with water beads?

You might also enjoy Scavenger Hunts for PreSchool Learning and Button Activities for Kids.

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4 thoughts on “Water Beads Surprise!”

  1. I haven’t seen these before, they look a little like those bath pearls I remember from my own childhood, which were fabulous fun to squidge!

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