I had never heard of water beads but read about them on a great blog for play ideas, so I decided to find some and give them a try. I read that they can be found at the dollar store, but I didn't have any luck there. I know people who are really into them also order them off ebay in bulk for cheap, but since I was just getting started I got mine from good old Wal-mart! You can find them in the floral decorating section (should be by the craft stuff), apparently they are used to put in vases and look pretty...whoda thunk!?!
Anyways, I got 3 packages...yellow, blue and green (I read that the red ones can stain), for $2 each. They are tiny little things and I think come 100 to a pack. They are non-toxic but not recommended to eat, obviously, I doubt they would digest well! My little non eater didn't even try to put one in his mouth, he prefers crayons apparently.
We tried the yellow first, here they are ready to "grow"! You soak the package in 1.5 ish liters of water for 4ish hours. The "ish"es are because I don't really remember and don't want to go look at the package! But it really doesn't matter exactly how long or much. 
This was after an hour and I though I did it wrong somehow...not much progress :(
But 4ish hours later they had soaked up pretty much all the water, I drained the rest off and we were ready to play!
You mean I get to touch these?!?
This picture is his first time squeezing one with all his little might, which is where the mess comes in...they can kind of bust with that much force from Super T leaving a gel-ish mess. I like my ish-es!
Lots of scooping and transferring. Those are his favorite things to do with lots of little things these days.
Then he went for the one-by-one by hand move, which worked nicely and neatly for a while.
More scooping...
We ended with full on both hand flinging...the camera went away because this clean mommy had a small panic attack! He started stepping on them busting them...a large mess ensued! I am glad he had so much fun, but I now have a shower curtain liner to put on the floor for our next adventure. And, I am planning to bust out the light box from the previous post too...how cool would water beads on lights be?!? Stay tuned for pictures from that. I will everyday be working on my mess anxiety to have pictures of the whole process...flying things and all :)
3 comments:
My great grandma used these for plants if they're the same thing. I'd sneak and touch with my finger tip.
I so want to do this! I love it :)
I'm still as clean as possible with crafts, I'd say I'm fun, but not that fun :)
Cool! I may have to get some for....me! Love you! Dad/Grandad
You can tell he is loving every minute of it.
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