My kids really love their water beads and I love how they have been incorporated into their play (they make great pretend cargo for the trucks and trains).

Pink has had quite a sensory challenge with water so I am thrilled that she has taken to the water beads and is actually enjoying the feeling of them.  I like to find ways of including sensory items into our learning and really wanted to do something with the water beads.

We got our measuring cups that we use for baking and our old kitchen scale and Pink got busy. I also included some ice trays so Blue could participate.  He had a great time placing one water bead in each cube while he practiced his counting but he quickly left that to join his big sister with her weighing.

She started off by comparing how many water beads filled the 1 cup verses the 1/4 cup she then weighed them both.  She was thrilled when she could see that the 1 cup full of water beads weighed more than 1/4 cup.  I got a very excited ” I knew it.”

She wanted to compare the water beads to something else so she got her bean sensory tub out and compared the weight of 1/4 cup of water beads to 1/4 cup of beans.  I got another very excited “mommy I just knew the beans would weigh more and I was correct.”

She was having so much fun with this that I suggest we try a few other items.  Pink selected her Pom Poms from the art trolley and Blue brought us his wooden building blocks.  Both kids got very involved in comparing the different weights of the different materials and the different weights of the different quantities.

Pink got so excited that she went to fetch a toy scale that she has but unfortunately the toy scale has a very confusing face which complicated maters.  I explained to the kids that it was just a pretend toy and that it could not really measure, they where sad but they left it alone and focused on the kitchen scale.

I had a chuckle when later that evening as I was running the kids bath Blue got the “human scale” (his words) out and weighed himself, then he asked his sister to stand on the scale and he even asked me.  Later while the kids where having their bath I heard them discussing the fact that mummy is bigger so her number on the scale was big and Blue is the smallest so his number on the scale was the lowest.