Fun with Water Beads

Water  beads provide a great sensory experience, with their vibrant colours and interesting texture. Just watching the water beads grow and observing the changes along the way is fun on its own! Read about how to hydrate your water beads and get some inspiration on how to play with them!

Note: These are safe for touching and playing but NOT eating. Please supervise closely or save the activities for when your child is older.

To start off: Empty the tiny, dehydrated beads into a container and add plenty of water. The beads will absorb water and grow. It can take up to about 8 hours to grow to full size.

Play ideas

1. Sorting - Get in some counting practice, together with colour recognition and fine motor skill development in this activity. Use hands, or spoons and scoops.

2. Balancing - Poke golf tees onto the cover of a cardboard box that you do not need anymore. Practice fine motor skills by using tweezers to pick up each water bead and place it carefully onto each golf tee. Challenge your friends and family to see who can balance the most number of water beads on the golf tees in 1 minute!

3. Paint - Line the inside of a cardboard box with paper. Drop two colours of paint onto different parts of the paper. Put a few water beads into the box. Here comes the fun part - tilt the box any direction you want and move the beads around. The beads will pick up the paint and create interesting patterns on the paper.

4. Water bead stress ball - Fill up uninflated balloons with water beads. Leave some space in the balloon for the beads to move around. Tie up the balloon when it is about eighty per cent filled. Squeeze the stress ball and feel the water beads move around.

5. Small world play - Water beads are useful as props in a small world play scene. Setting up a underwater scene? After adding sand and some fish figurine in your sensory tray, add in some blue water beads to alleviate the sensory experience.