Friday, August 20, 2010

Water Beads

I came across these water beads at the markets recently and bought a pack to use as a sensory activity. They start out as tiny little beads but when placed in water they swell over a period of about 8 hours until they fill a 1 litre capacity. They are non toxic, dont go mouldy and if left they eventually shrink back down to the tiny bead size again and can be reused over and over. Bubble loved watching the water beads swell and grow and once they were full size she spent hours playing cooking and counting games with them.
We only bought the one pack at the time but I have since found them on Ebay selling as 'Bio Gel Water Beads' so have ordered a heap of colours for us to play with in future. They feel and look amazing!

You can see how tiny the little beads start out.

We used a glass bowl so that the girls could watch the beads growing.




After 4 hours the beads had grown a lot!



After 8 hours they were huge and almost filled the bowl.

They feel wonderful, a great activity on a warm day.





4 comments:

  1. Wow, I have never heard of these before!
    Looks really cool!

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  2. Thanks for sharing these! We got some via ebay after I read this. They are a lot of fun! And great for all sorts of reasons.

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  3. Be careful... these can be very dangerous if swallowed. They can continue to swell and cause bowel obstructions.

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  4. Definitely, like anything the kids play with during sensory time it must be supervised :) We keep ours in a snap lock jar on the top shelf of the pantry when not in use so the kids can't access the dehydrated beads.

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