32 Ways To Play With Water Beads

There are so many ways that you can play and explore with Water Beads!  I collected 32 ideas, but there are so many more if you keep searching. Water Beads are definitely a sensory experience, but I wanted to group the play activities into "6 categories of ideas" that seemed to be the most popular: (1)Exploring With Light, (2)Creative Sensory Bins, (3)Painting, (4)Shaving Cream, (5)Science, and (6)Plastic Eggs.  So here are all 32 Ideas. Have Fun!

Exploring Water Beads and Light

Water Bead Exploration 0n a Light Table (photo above) TinkerLab

Exploring Color and Light with Water Beads Growing A Jeweled Rose

Glowing Water Beads Growing A Jeweled Rose

Water Beads in the Dark Preschool Projects

Exploring the Light Table in Preschool Teach Preschool

Water Beads and Light Play At Home Mom

Water Beads/Gems on the Light Table Child Central Station

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Creative Sensory Bins with Water Beads

Water Bead Seaside Sensory Tub (photo above) The Imagination Tree

The Planet Earth Water Bead Sensory Bin Small Potatoes

Water Beads, Light and Feet Familylicious

Creep Crawly Water Beads Messy Kids

Space Play with Water Beads NurtureStore

Monster Sensory Tub I Can Teach My Child

Hidden Diamonds Sensory Bin  Play Create Explore

Colour Sorting With Water Beads Rainy Day Mum

Bubblegum Scented Water Bead Play Cachey Mama's Classroom

Water Beads and Slime The Chocolate Muffin Tree

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Painting With Water Beads

Water Bead Painting (photo above) Growing A Jeweled Rose

No Mess  Finger Painting with Water Beads Our Feminist {Play School}

Creative Painting-Water Beads Reclaimed Rubbish

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Water Beads and Shaving Cream

Water Beads and Shaving Cream (photo above) Dirt and Boogers

Water Beads ~ and Shaving Cream 3G=Growing Godly Girlz

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Water Bead Science

Understanding Growth -a toddler Science experiment (photo above) Rainy day Mum

Sensory Play- Rainbow Water Beads  Puddles and Gumboots

Water Bead Science NurtureStore

Experiment: Growing and Shrinking Water Beads The Chocolate Muffin Tree

Dehydration of Water Beads Fit Kids Clubhouse

Preschool Science: Water Beads Raising Lifelong Learners

Water Bead Goop A Little Learning For Two

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Water Beads and Plastic Eggs

Water Bead Eggs (photo above) Modern Parents Messy Kids

Green Eggs and Ham Water Bead Activity Reading Confetti

Easter Egg Water Bead Discovery Dabbler Mom


Do You Have More Ideas to Share?

Here are some more:

Frozen Water Beads

This post is shared with: It's Playtime, Fit Kids Clubhouse

Shaving Cream Marbled Easter Egg Cards

We created some Easter Egg greeting cards this past week. We used our shaving cream marbled papers left over from when we made Shaving Cream Marbled Hearts and Shaving Cream Marbled Rainbows. If you haven't seen our posts on shaving cream marbling, be sure to check out the great tutorials on it in each post here and here.

To get started, we first gathered our wonderful supply of shaving cream marbled papers.  Then we cut out a bunch of Easter Eggs that could fit on a greeting card.  Some small, medium, and large sizes.  For younger children you may want to have the eggs already cut out.

Then you can either buy pre-made blank greeting cards or just fold a piece of paper in half to create a card size of your choice.  We used Glue Sticks to adhere the marble paper eggs to our cards.  Glue sticks worked really well for this process.

We tried various different egg arrangements.  C enjoyed this process of collaging the paper eggs together.

Ta-da! Here are some of our finished cards! Ready to send out or give to friends and family for Easter!

Happy Easter!

Shaving Cream Marbled Rainbows

I've said it before, but I just LOVE Marbling with Shaving cream.  It is such an easy way to marble paper with lovely results.  Rainbows have been quite popular the past month, so we decided to create some Shaving Cream Marbled Rainbows.  It is the same process as our Shaving Cream Marbled Hearts, but I will still go over the steps to review.

First, spread out some foamy shaving cream on a flat surface or in a tray or pan.  Smooth it out a bit.

Then use either food colors or liquid watercolors and put blobs of color with a paint brush or eye dropper.   We made the colors in Rainbow order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet.  Liquid Watercolors give the most vibrant color!

Next swirl/marble the colors with a stick.  We used a kebab stick.  You could use a toothpick, popsicle stick, or even a stick from outdoors. If you had a fancy comb you could use that too.

Gorgeous color!

Now put a piece of paper on top of the swirled colors and press down and smooth your hands over the paper.

Lift up the paper.

Then use a flat edge to scrape the shaving cream off the paper.  You could use a lid cut in half or even a piece of cardboard with a straight edge.

Scraping off the shaving cream reveals Gorgeous Rainbow Marbled Paper!

This is a lighter version when the shaving cream and pigment have mixed up.  If you want brighter results put a brand new clean layer of shaving cream and add the Liquid watercolors.

What would you create with this Rainbow Marbled Paper?

Shaving Cream Marbled Valentine Hearts

I absolutely LOVE this process and have done it many times, but never did a post about it.....so here it  is! We made Marbled Valentine Hearts with shaving cream! Here are some of our beauties.  We put them on a string/yarn as a decoration to hang vertically or as a garland!

To create marbled papers of any kind you need:

Shaving Cream/foam

a tray of some kind

Water colors or food coloring + water

brushes/eye droppers

sticks of any kind or combs

paper

a plastic lid cut in half or piece of cardboard

To begin,  spread shaving cream in a tray and flatten the top a bit like this.  About an inch deep of shaving cream.

Now drip watered down paint or food coloring with a paint brush or eye dropper on the surface of the shaving cream.

Then,  take a stick or comb and swirl around the paint to create zig zags, curvy lines, or whatever you choose.

Then lay down a paper on the marbled shaving cream.

Lift up the paper and you'll have something like this! (not finished yet)

Now take a straight edged piece of plastic or piece of cardboard (we used a plastic lid cut in half), and scrape the shaving cream off the heart. Messy!

Under the shaving cream layer will reveal a GORGEOUS marbled effect! Let them dry for a few hours.

Then we glued them on colored paper to frame them.  Here is a close up of one of my favorite marbled hearts.

Here are bunches of our marbled shaving cream hearts! Love them all!

After we made bunches of hearts C just wanted to play in the shaving cream which is always a FAVORITE!

We've had fun with shaving cream in these posts too:

Super Easy Shaving Cream Bathtub Paint

Shaving Cream Cloud Paint

This post is linked to: Link and Learn, Craft Schooling Sunday, Learn Through Play Monday