We have a love hate relationship with water beads in our house. The children love them and they are a great sensory input, the adults in the house even like playing with them but they can be a pain when they spill on the floor.
I like to try and mix things up when it comes to sensory input tools so our water beads are usually used for about a week or two and then we switch to another sensory tool. I find that water beads do start to have a bad smell to them after about a week so I will throw them out and make some new ones. One tip I learned was from Artist happened when she had made some water beads and then put the lid on the container, when she opened the container the next day the beads smelled so bad we had to throw them out. So my tip would be to leave them in an open container.
When using our water beads I like to add essential oils to them, my favourite would be Peace and Calming from Young Living or lavender (works great right before bed to help calm everyone down).
Artist likes to put her water beads in a balloon to make a homemade stress ball, if you are going to make this I would suggest doubling up the balloons or using a strong balloon, thin balloons have been known to break sending water beads all over the floor.
When traveling I like to put water beads in a Ziploc bag that is taped closed so that the children cannot open the bag. This works great for long car rides, as it keeps the mess contained. You can squeeze the water beads in the bag or even put the bag up to the window and see the different colors of the beads as the sun shines through them.
Our usual way of using water beads at home is simply to have them in a plastic bowl where we can can use our hands to play with the beads. There are many different ways you can play with the beads such as:
I like to try and mix things up when it comes to sensory input tools so our water beads are usually used for about a week or two and then we switch to another sensory tool. I find that water beads do start to have a bad smell to them after about a week so I will throw them out and make some new ones. One tip I learned was from Artist happened when she had made some water beads and then put the lid on the container, when she opened the container the next day the beads smelled so bad we had to throw them out. So my tip would be to leave them in an open container.
When using our water beads I like to add essential oils to them, my favourite would be Peace and Calming from Young Living or lavender (works great right before bed to help calm everyone down).
Artist likes to put her water beads in a balloon to make a homemade stress ball, if you are going to make this I would suggest doubling up the balloons or using a strong balloon, thin balloons have been known to break sending water beads all over the floor.
When traveling I like to put water beads in a Ziploc bag that is taped closed so that the children cannot open the bag. This works great for long car rides, as it keeps the mess contained. You can squeeze the water beads in the bag or even put the bag up to the window and see the different colors of the beads as the sun shines through them.
Our usual way of using water beads at home is simply to have them in a plastic bowl where we can can use our hands to play with the beads. There are many different ways you can play with the beads such as:
- squishing the beads and breaking them with your hands
- putting the beads into a clean medication syringe and pushing the plunger down to push the beads out the bottom.
- sorting the beads by color is great for fine motor skills and also practicing our colors
- using scoops to up the beads, place them in a container and dump (because we all know how much fun dumping can be)
This is set of pots and scoops from Discovery Toys that we have had for many years and have been used for bath time, beach time or sensory play.