My kids love sensory play and today they decided to get a tad crazy with their quiet time activity by mixing their two favorite sensory bin materials – Water Beads + Slime. Playing with this slime was so much fun and learning How to Make Water Bead Slime was an adventure in itself!
This has been the stretchiest slime we have made. How the waterbeads and slime acted together was fascinating!
Earlier this summer we were able to visit this amazing natural playground in Rochester, MN. If ya’ll ever go through there make sure to stop and visit (it is called Oxbow). While we were there we got to see Frogs and Toads up close and it was super cool. This experience spurred on a fascination with frogs for my kids. Ya’ll are never going to believe what this Frog Egg Sensory Bin is made out of, but it was perfect for setting up some pretend play while learning about the anatomy of Frog Eggs.
Ok…so it looks gross. I know. But if you ask me Frogs fit into that slimy gross category. We just did this activity the other day and my kids are already asking to do it again. This sensory bin is a blast!
Water Beads are by far one of my kids favorite sensory materials. The ways that you can play with water beads are endless and they are cheap! We have tried everything from adding scents to our water beads to freezing them! Our lesson this week had a craft that required Marbles and Paint to do it. While we had the paint, we did not have any marbles lying around. But…we did have water beads! We had an absolute blast with this substitution – Painting with Water Beads was a major hit!
What I loved about this activity is that while it was very messy, it was super adaptable to meet the needs of both of my kids!
Shaving Cream and Water Beads Sensory Bin: Over the last month we have been exploring different ways to play with water beads and our beads are finally reaching the point where they are just about ready to head to the garbage. Wanting to squeeze one last fun activity out of them we mixed our water beads with another one of our sensory favorites — shaving cream! The sensory bin experiment turned out awesome and was a huge hit with the kids!
While the kids did have a blast playing with this activity and it was great for adding a fine motor challenge, it did not hold their attention as long as some of our other sensory bins have. This activity though was fairly low mess, gave me enough time to clean the kitchen while they played (a good 20 minutes), and was super easy to throw together!
Frozen Water Bead Sensory Bin: Water beads are quickly becoming a family favorite around here. We had a blast adding in essential oils to our water beads a couple weeks ago which piqued an interest as to how else we could play with water beads!
Water beads are tiny hard beads that resemble pellets. They grow when left in water, and become a slippery and squishy sensory material that kids enjoy playing with. Heading into this activity I had absolutely no idea what would happen if we froze water beads, but the kiddos wanted to do something similar to our dinosaur ice excavation activity so we gave it a try…
These frozen water beads were an absolute blast and while not an activity that held my kids attention for one long session, it was one that they visited frequently throughout the day. Am thinking this would make a fun observational experiment next time!