In preparation of St. Patrick’s Day and Green week in my Tot School plan, I put together a green water bead sensory bin! If you have never played with water beads you are really missing out man. It’s like if you could make Jello more solid and more slippery and well less edible!
WATER BEAD SENSORY BIN TOOLS
I will be honest. The beads that I prepped were actually more of a teal and a black…the black was on purpose the teal not as much. When you first start water beads they are tiny and the color can be concentrated so what I thought was a mid-tone green turned out to be more of a teal…my bad.
To make up for the wrong colors of beads I just included as many green sensory tools as I could find! I pulled the slotted spoon for a couple of reasons
- 1 – Leave the extra water in the bottom of the bin
- 2 – I wanted her to work on her spoon scooping
It performed the first task perfectly but I think the spoon was a little big for her to maneuver it very well. Need to be on the lookout for a smaller slotted spoon!
Overnight soak
I like to start my water beads a good 12 hours before I want to use them and I tend to babysit them over the first few hours to make sure I added enough water for absorption, but after a while, I step away and let them do their magic! Honestly, I just set them up to soak the night before and then check on them a couple of times before bed and then go to sleep. By the morning they are good to go.
WATER BEADS BOUNCE – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Water beads are such a fun sensory filler but they do have their downsides.
- They are a choking hazard so please use with caution.
- Water beads are slippery and when dropped they can bounce a lot farther than you think!
- They can sometimes grow mold – so keep them ventilated and rinse them after each use.
Also encourage gentle hands, as they will break with some force. It’s a fact of water beads that you will break some as you play, but reminders to be gentle will help them stay
Our green water bead sensory bin required a little more supervision than I really want to have to give for sensory play, but there were things I wanted to monitor!
A. I wanted to make sure she didn’t try and eat them (she didn’t)
B. That she didn’t get to rough with them. (she did occasionally)
C. I made sure that they didn’t end up everywhere (they didn’t for the most part)
THINKING BACK ON OUR GREEN WATER BEAD SENSORY BIN
All in all, she was interested in them but she wasn’t totally engrossed with them beyond the first time we pulled them out. She would really only play with them if I was sitting right there playing with her and while I do enjoy playing with water beads. That’s not really what I want out of a sensory bin. I’m looking for some independent explorations and I think that water beads might be out of her wheelhouse right now. So we’ll try again this summer!
If you follow me on Pinterest you can get even more ideas about sensory bins and you can join is all the fun sensory play!
Have you ever used water beads? What kind of sensory bins did you set up with them? I’m always on the lookout for new setups!
