Water beads

The water bead sensory play activity has been going arouond the blogosphere for a while now. And I finally managed to get my hands on a couple of packets at the florist. They didnt have too many colors - after all they have a functional role, but we decided to go with the available pinks and purples. The girls had seen some water beads at the dentist last week and knew that they were beautiful and looked aesthetic, but they had not much clue about how it worked.

So here's how it looked after we had dropped the whole lot of them in the required amount of water. Correction - they were a lot smaller, but grew by the time I got the camera

The girls naturally wanted to put their hands on the beads, and they didnt want to wait till morning when the soaking process (4 hours) would be completed

They watched in fascination as the beads grew slowly from the snall mustard size to something that looked and felt like a raspberry.

It was Sophia's idea to add the marbles to them. Afterall, they looked like marbles, just smaller and softer. Would the marbles grow? Evidently not. This is what the tub looked like in the morning

And how the beads looked in Anjali's hands

There is a lot of Science in the water beads, as long as the kids dont pop them in the mouth. They reflect the color of the surface they are put on in very pretty beads, and are probably excellent on a light table, as many blogging parents have explored before. There is the aspect of expanding to absorb water, which Anjali noticed when she pointed out why the pink beads were growing bigger than the purple ones. They act as lenses as husband discovered, and they are simply too pretty.