Water beads: No we don't love them.

(Goblin is 28 months)

Maybe I should call this post "The truth about water beads". I kept seeing posts on the American blogs about these things called 'water beads'. But they aren't part of the UK's normal play repertoire and I didn't really understand what they were. Then Cathy at the Nurturestore found some in the UK and wrote a great post. I felt inspired so I rushed out to buy some. 

Basically they are the water retaining gel that florists use to keep cut flowers alive in vases. They look super pretty and feel like squidgy marbles - and when soaked for long enough are about the size of marbles too. I actually found some at Hobbycraft that were ready swollen.  Proper water beads come as tiny beads smaller than a grain of rice and have to be soaked for 6 hours to get to a decent size. If you want to buys some in the UK they are available at amazon called Expanding Gel Aqua Beads. But be warned they come with a scary label that says "DO NOT USE AS A TOY, KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN"! Goblin has stopped putting stuff in his mouth so I thought I'd risk it.

A lot of the posts about water beads go on about finding a way of containing them. I had assumed this was just about containing mess. I have recently been training myself to be super calm about mess (more on that in a different post), so I thought I'd just pop them in a tub and they'd be fine. HAHAHAHA!

I gave Goblin a giant sieve spoon to scoop them with. He started off well but these things roll - and I mean far, far away. I think I will be finding them for weeks to come. They also squish under foot leaving a rather unpleasant jelly substance on the floor, so while a carpeted room might contain them better I wouldn't advise it.

And its not just that they roll, they are also "slippery little suckers" (to quote Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman). When you try and pick them up they scoot off across the floor. And when you try and put them back in the bowl they bounce. Like crazy little bouncy balls, right out of the bowl and all over the place.

In case you didn't get this, I'm saying ALL OVER THE PLACE!

So hear are a couple of pictures of the type you see on posts about water beads. They do look very pretty, especially with a light shone through them. (We don't have a light box so I just shone a torch through the bottom of the bowl).
You might think from the tone of this post that the issue was more with me getting stressed by the mess, but actually I remained rather zen like and amused by the whole thing. The problem was that after an initial 'what new strange thing is this' type interest, Goblin got frustrated by their unwieldy nature. He couldn't hold onto them for long enough to do anything with them. And after about half an hour he gave up and started to play Robots with the plastic bowl instead.

I won't write Water Beads off all together. They are a pain in the back side to keep contained but I'm sure I can get some further enjoyment out of them. I was thinking maybe mixing them in with a non newtonian fluid (cornflour and water) to make them more handleable. But I have to conclude that for now they are not the unmitigated success I was hoping for.

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