Making Our Water Bead Sensory Bin

04/10/2015

Sensory Bin #3

Since having my second daughter in November I have been wanting to have something quick and easy to give to my 2 year old when I’m nursing my daughter or otherwise preoccupied with something else that isn’t just turning on the TV and something that will keep her attention for longer than a minute – for those of you with a two year old I’m sure you know what I mean!

So a couple weeks ago we headed to the dollar store, on a mission to find items for our very first sensor bins. We made 4, all of which I will be sharing – this is our third – with water beads.

For our wedding we used water beads in vases as part of the center piece. I remembered how awesome these beads were – we couldn’t help but play with them as we made our center pieces and at the wedding everyone was playing with them!

We started off with 40g of water beads and emptied them into our bin

We then added 4 liters of water

And then we waited for the beads to start expanding

My daughter loved standing at the table watching the beads expand!

It took about 5 hours but the beads eventually expanded completely.

We purchased blue beads, they also came in a variety of other colours, including clear – where you could add your own colouring to the water and the beads would pick up the colour as they absorbed the water to expand.

Because the beads are wet to the touch we decided to make this bin our under the sea bin. We add starfish, sea shell and small, under the water themed toys.

This is definitely my daughters favorite bin. She loves the feel of the wet beads, she enjoys listening to the ocean with the sea shells and playing with the sea animal toys. She will often take out all the shells and toys and put both hands into the beads and just move them back and forth!