Sensory Play- Water Beads Series

Have you ever played with water beads? It is a delightful experience for kids of all ages and therapeutic even for adults^_^

They come in various colours and are delightful to the eyes. They feel really squishy, slippery and give you an addictive sensory experience.

Water beads are commonly used for decorative purposes. (Please be cautious when your kids are playing with them as they are not edible. ) Supervision may be necessary depending on the age of the child.

This is how you use them:

Step 1

Put a handful of the dry tiny beads in some water (about 100 – 300 beads depending on the size of your tray). Leave it in a cool place until the beads enlarge. The process takes about 12 – 24 hours. As the beads grow, you can add in more water if required. It is best you get your child involved from the very beginning. It will be a fun experience for them watching it grow.

Tiny water beads before it grow.

Step 2

This is what your beads should look like once they are of full size. Now, they are ready for play…touch them!!

Ta-da! The colourful water beads "grown" after 12 to 24 hours^_^

Step 3

To make it more interesting, you can add in more things such as a fishing set, a few cups, toy figurines, marbles, ice, boats etc. Items you can add in are endless. You can add in various other items that the kids could play with. My daughter and her friends have hours of fun creating and playing with their water bins. All I did was encourage her by providing them with a basic tray and water beads. The rest of the items were put together from the existing toys they had. 

The DIY water play series done by my daughter & her friends.

Besides water beads, she also added in her own toys like princess series and little pony.

My daughter was holding a small container with her "masterpiece"- the freezing toy (will share in later post, stay tuned!).

*** *** ***

Learning Outcome

The material your child works with work with in the water bin have many sensory attributes — they may be of different colours, have a certain smell or odourless, warm or cool, wet or dry, rough or smooth, hard or soft, textured or slimy. Discovering and differentiating these characteristics is a first step in classification or sorting — an important part of your child’s science learning and discovery.

The Cognitive Experience - The most apparent cognitive skills sharpened by sensory play are problem solving and decision making; simply present a child with a scenario and various materials with which to find a solution, and you can almost see the connections their brains are making. For example deciding how to build a boat that will float or how to freeze a dinosaur toy. In addition, children can build math skills such as comparing size (small/big), counting and one-to-one correspondence (matching numbers to objects), timing (does water or oil move faster? How long does it take to freeze something), matching (same sizes and colours), and sorting and classifying (marbles, crystals or beans), and science skills such as cause and effect (what happens when I add water to sand?), gravity (water slides down a slide, not up) and states of matter (ice melts). Without realizing it, children grow into amateur scientists by making predictions and observations, and even develop analytical skills.

The Physical Experience- Fine motor skills are often defined as the coordination of small muscle movements (usually hand-eye coordination) that enable us to perform a variety of important tasks. For children, these tasks might include tying shoes, zipping zippers and even turning the pages of a book. Gross motor skills involve the larger muscles of the body and include activities such as walking, running, pushing, pulling and throwing a ball. Some examples of sensory play benefit the development of fine motor skills by encouraging manipulation of materials, such as mixing, measuring, pouring and scooping, while other examples, such as exploring surfaces, lifting, throwing, rolling and water play, help develop gross motor skills. Even recruiting your child to help you build a sensory table for future explorations is exercising motor skills.

The Linguistic Experience - Children can’t define parts of language until they’ve experienced the true meaning of the word. The attempt to convey something without the proper words to do so can be frustrating for children—and adults! Sensory play encourages children to use descriptive and expressive language, and to find meaning behind essentially meaningless words or gibberish. Take for instance, the word “slimy”. Sure, you can explain what it means with different adjectives, but until you experience something slimy first hand, that’s all it will be is words.

The Social and Emotional Experience- Remember that sensory play provides many opportunities for children to engage in active learning for development. Take a look at the different areas in your home and how your child can play there. With thoughtful adult support and interesting, open-ended materials, your child will have hours of learning through play.

I usually ask a few questions at the end or when I am also playing, such as how long did it take for the ice to melt? How come the ice from the bigger container took longer to melt? Did you manage to play without spilling any water? How come certain items float and some sink? You will be surprised with the answers you get and you can use this opportunity to teach them!

Since the children love it, this will also give you some free time to catch up on some work or chores that you have been putting aside whilst they play. The best part is the sensory bins can be placed nearby for easy supervision.

*** *** ***

For all you busy mums that have no time to create these bins, you could purchase a ready-made set, please contact us for more info (SMS/ Whatsapp 018-321 7228). Our Sensory Series 1.0- Water Beads Series comes with 1 plastic container with cover for easy storage, 1000 water beads, 2 cups, 1 fish that moves in the water and a fishing set that consist of 1 fishing rod and 6 random items e.g. fishes, ducks, starfish etc. 

Click here to place your order =)

*** *** ***

Few Tips:

1) Put a towel under the tray before your child starts to play so that it is easy for you to tidy up 

     later. 

2) Keep the beads in some water when storing so that they stay at the same size. I use the 

    beads as a centre piece in my kitchen and everyone can’t help playing with them when 

    passing by =D; 

3) Easy cleaning tips after play; as seen in the picture below, you could place a large kitchen     

    towel on your counter-top. Place all the rinsed water play items on it to dry out so that toysare 

    ready to be stored away for next time.

*** *** ***

Here you go for the first sensory play series brought by NewGen Xplorer,

if you like our post and products, please show us some support by hitting the LIKE button on our facebook page ya!

See you next time!

-Coming Up Next--> Sensory Play- Sand Play Series-