As I hope you are enjoying warm weather now that we are well into June, I knew we couldn’t do our Little Mermaid day without getting, well, wet.
“Darling it’s better, down where it’s wetter. Take it from me!
Up on the shore they work all day, out in the sun they slave away.
While we devotin’, full time to floatin’
Under the sea!”
Under the Sea, The Little Mermaid
(Anyone else wish they were devoting’ their full time to floatin’ right about now? I know I do!)
To make it extra fun, I decided to spend a little money on this activity and branch from what we really had on hand at home. The boys had never done water beads because I had never really given them the time of day and this seemed like the perfect time to give them a try.
I bought this set of Ocean Water Beads from Amazon that came with under sea creatures and a shovel for them to use to look for the animals. It was $16 well spent, let me tell you!
The only thing about the set- it didn’t come with directions! I learned that you do 3C tap water/ pack of beads and you should let them soak for around 4 hours, at least.
My oldest helped me set it up without knowing what we were doing, and wondered aloud why we were filling the water table with sprinkles. As you can see, they absorbed beautifully! I didn’t add the creatures until after the water beads were done soaking.
I set this up right before we did our Little Mermaid paintings and watched the movie with our Under the Sea Mix and Mermaid Water.
Our beads soaked for almost exactly four hours and turned out beautifully. We ended up playing in the sprinkler, with water guns, and our bubble machine as well. It was such a fun day. Surprisingly, even my 8YO got a kick out of the water beads and looking for the sea creatures. I thought it might be a little “below” him age wise, but he really seemed to enjoy it!
We were able to get multiple uses out of these beads. They did start to shrink by the third day we had left them out, but when we added more water- they bubbled up again! They were a lot of fun to play with.
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