Activities with Water Beads

Shaving Cream and Water Beads Sensory Bin

March 8, 2025April 27, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

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!
Shaving Cream and Water Beads Sensory Bin
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

March 7, 2025March 22, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

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!

Frozen 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!

Stress Away Water Bead Play!

March 7, 2025March 6, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Water Bead Sensory Play: Have you or your kids ever played with water beads? If not then you MUST! Water beads are such an amazing sensory experience! They’re squishy, slightly slimy, slippery, and just absolutely amazing!

Water Bead Sensory Play for Quiet Time
This activity has quickly become one of MY favorites. In one extremely simple activity kids are exposed to science, sensory and fine motor exploration! Plus it uses essential oils that were amazing for calming my kiddos down before nap time!!!