Tuesday, September 4, 2012

WATER BEADS!

We bought some cheap water beads from Amazon.  Add 1 teaspoon of beads to 1 quart of water, wait several hours and watch the magic.  We were so excited! 



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1.5 hours later, ooh ahh!


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A couple more hours...

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After 4 hours...


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We let them sit in the water overnight.  This is what we woke up to!


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Then the fun began.  Mommy got out some baby food jars.  We filled each jar with one color bead to see if an equal amount of each color would fill the jars.  It took a different amount of each color to fill the baby food jars.  36 yellow, 48 pink and 42 white.

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We cut some open.


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Then Turkey decided to take a sample of a water bead...


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...and see what it looked like under the microscope.


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Mommy wanted to take a picture but couldn't.  It looked like dozens of tiny prisms.  It was so beautiful!

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Some of the water beads didn't grow very big.


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That night Daddy put some water beads in baby food jars with finger lights and made us night lights!

They were so much fun we did the whole thing over again the next week! :)

8 comments:

  1. What fabulous ideas! I have some water beads I just haven't used yet and I really like the ideas you had for them :)

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  2. I got some water beads a while back and we hadn't got round to using them yet. Thanks for the inspiration - love your experiments!

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  3. Thank you, Lucinda! Hope you get to use them soon and would love to see what you do with them. :) They are really fun!

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  4. This is a really cool post! We have these and love them for play-didn't even think of using them for school! Thanks for the inspiration! Also-the type we use are kind of pricey....were you able to find them 'offbrand' or not marketed as part of a popular childrens toy! Would love to know just to save some pennies! Thanks and I enjoyed the post! Visiting from HipHomeschool Mom's!
    GodBless and have a great weekend!
    Jennifer
    http://stoppraylisten.blogspot.com

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  5. If you have an Amazon Prime account or know someone who does, you can find them there. Here is what we purchased: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VW4636/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    You don't know what colors they will send you, but you could always mix them all together in a small container and just measure out a couple teaspoons. Hope that helps. (This probably cost us around $2.00 to do this activity.)

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  6. Awesome! Thank you for the info! My daughter has an Orbeez foot spa that she LOVES but the refills are like $7.00 a box at Walmart! They are the same as what you used for this project! SCORE for us, will be ordering soon! Thanks again! And thanks for the inspiration for fun school ideas!
    Jennifer
    http://stoppraylisten.blogpsot.com

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  7. You are so very welcome, Jennifer! I'm checking out your blog right now. Your kids are beautiful! How long have you been homeschooling?

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