Edible Water Beads

I'm excited to be sharing with you a play idea that I've been experimenting with for several months now: Edible Water Beads or Bears as is the case!

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Discovery

Did you know that if you soak mini jubes in tea overnight that they expand?

I didn't until Bubbles had a teaparty with her teddies earlier this year and then we very naughtily didn't clean up until the morning.

My mother had spoiled Bubbles by buying her some yummy, mini jube lollies, thinking she could enjoy eating them but instead Bubbles had decided that they were sugar cubes and poured her tea over the top of them.

Since Bubbles had no interest whatsoever in eating the jubes when we discovered those in the teacup had expanded we poured the rest of the bag of lollies into a bowl of water and left them to expand.

It was so exciting to see that purely by accident we had made something similar to water beads but that Squiggles could play with too as they were safe for her to taste.

Experimentation

I then tried to recreate the same idea a couple of weeks later by buying a packet of Homebrand Jubes from Woolworths but unfortunately all they did was go white, slimy and gross.

I experimented with several other types of lollies until we discovered that for them to expand the lollies need to be the shiny, soft type of gummy lolly, like gummy bears!

Replication

To make our water bears we simply placed a bag of Haribo Gummy Bears (they were on on special at Woolworths but the $1 Kmart bears work too) in a deep container and then completely covered them in cold water. 

We left them overnight to grow, although throughout the day neither Bubbles nor I could help running our hands through the water to have a touch and see how they were growing.

The next morning our bears had doubled in size! 

The above picture show's a normal sized bear on the left and a soaked one on the right. 

I then simply placed the bears in a sensory tub and placed it on a drip mat on the floor (I like using a toddler bedwetting sheet (similar to this one) as it absorbs all the liquid and leaves my floor dry).

Exploration

The girls didn't need any prompting what so ever to start playing.

The girls explored and played with the bears enthusiastically by:

• running their hands through the bears
• bouncing them (they don't bounce as well as water beads but they still bounce)
• squishing them
• tasting them (in case you're wondering they taste like water rather than sugar)
• and even sorting them 

Destruction

Just in case you think it was all roses, this was the end result-almost all of the bears ended up on the floor rather than the sheet!

Bubbles is already asking to play again but this time I'm going to cover as much of the floor as possible!

Hope you're having a great day!
Victoria


For more activities like this check out my new book Learn with Play. It’s a collaborative work, written by myself and 93 other amazing bloggers, mothers, teachers and early childhood educators. The e-book comes with links to over 300 activities!

Please note when I say edible I mean safe to taste, not necessarily great to eat in large quantities! Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.