Indoor activity:- Playing with water beads

If you do not intend to go out on weekend, what would you like to do with your kids?
How about playing with some waterbeads? We bought a bag of water beads from Daiso.

There's loads of ideas in the net on how to have fun with water beads. Below are some tried and tested ideas.

We poured into tray and feel it in our hands.We tried to do some simple counting, 1 to 10, did some sorting but after a while, my girl resumed to picking them up and throwing into the tray. Then put her hands on them and move them around the tray. This help keep her entertained for 1 hour

She stepped on them and squashed them to bits!

This is what happen when she drops the beads

We did waterbeads painting. Put a piece of paper in the tray, ( You could use a recycle empty metal container for this purpose.) Add some colours and then drop in the waterbeads. Start shaking the tray. Initially, the painting was quite nice. But soon the beads gets stuck together and it becomes a smudge of paints.

What I suggest is if you have a bigger tray and if your kids doesn't mind dirtying their hands, you could actually ask them to throw the beads covered with paints one by one onto the paper. The bouncing beads will create prints on the paper when it bounces off the paper. It would be quite messy to do this way. So, be prepared to clean up.

Attached below the art pieces made by these water beads.
Note: As waterbeads itself contains water, you do not need to add water to the paint and don't be surprise if it makes a hole on the painting as it did to the 3rd art piece,

We did exploration on the expansion and contraction of water beads.
She was quite amazed at how fast the beads expand in water.

after 1 hrs. PS: This pack of beads is from Cold Storage.

after 3 hrs

after 4 hrs

after 5 hrs

after 7 hrs

As for the contraction, she didn't see it fast enough as it takes a couple of days even after I lay them out to dry on paper towels.


We froze water beads for ice play too and watch the process of melting. Once I kept the beads for a couple of days and totally forgot about them, the beads became brittle after all the freezing.

Melting...

Observe melting process

We tried to make a sensory waterplay using the mini styrofoam box, throwing in all the 3 colours beads. We had a wonderful time trying to look for the transparent beads which simply disappear into the water.

Notice the brittled blue beads?

I am still keeping the brittled beads and wondering whether I should use them in sensory bags or maybe a messy goo... :P

If you have tried water beads, what activities would you do?