Yesterday, I decided to introduce Water Beads to our play time.  I have read about them on several blogs so decided to give it a try.  These beads are the coolest thing – we had the privilege of watching them grow from the tiniest little balls to 50x their original size.  They are very sensory in how squishy and slippery they are.  I wanted to get right in there and play with them.  I added foam numbers and flashcards for them to match up.

They went right to it.  Gabriel was a little to little to match up the numbers but he sure had fun digging for the numbers through the beads.

The older two girls had a blast matching up their numbers.  I had them then tell me what number they had created.

Water beads are definitely going to be a main stay of fun around here.  If left out, they will begin to shrink down to their original size but all you have to do is add water and they will grow again.  They are nontoxic but if you have one who puts things in their mouth you will want to watch them carefully.

The only thing that dragged my kids away from this table was the swimming pool.  This will be a rainy day activity from now on. 

You can find water beads on Amazon for very inexpensively.  I paid $3.10 plus shipping for all these beads that filled the 9×13 pan that you see above.  You can 6 gallons of one color for about $5.50 here.  They have blue, green, clear, purple, or pink.

Have you ever used water beads with your kids?  What did you do with them?  Do you have a blog post about your activity?  Feel free to leave your post in the comments.

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