Red sensory bin with red water beads

Every week for the next few weeks, I'm going to do a color sensory bin for Gavin.  He is really into water beads right now so I thought that incorporating that would make him a happy boy.

I purchased the water beads in the vase section at Michael's. You can buy the pre-made beads or the ones you do yourself.  It was a dollar less to purchase 3x as much to do it ourselves so that's what I did. I used about half of the package and filled up our bin (from IKEA) with about an inch of water.  The kids really enjoyed watching them grow, saving that dollar was worth it ;).

This ended up not being nearly enough water, so we had to add about another inch.  You really can't add too much because you are going to strain them anyway.  We had to break them down with a fork, they kind of clumped together.

Then I just let em sit for about 4 hours and they really filled up the tub! Even I couldn't resist putting my hands in there. It was a bit of a soothing effect. That doesn't happen often around here, and no one was watching so I just relished the moment. The red color did dye our hands a bit but nothing major after washing.

To give you a better idea of how much half of that little package made, it filled the strainer, and covered my hand!

Here it is all ready for Tiny Tyke. 

A flower.  He didn't touch this. 

A red car. Gavin LOOOOOVES cars. 

I gave him some red tools to play with as well. 

Of course, the car was the first thing he went for.

  

He also really enjoyed scooping out the beads and watching them fall in the tub.  They have a bouncing effect so it was a good idea to keep this over the wood and not on the carpet! 

Even Haylie wanted in on the action. 

She thought it would be a good idea to stuff the beads in the pipe cleaners.

This lasted about 20 minutes.  That's a long time for an 18 month old. I'd say it was a success! 

Comments, thoughts, or ideas are welcomed!