In Home Entertainment: Glow-in-the-Dark Water Beads

So, actually, the glow-in-the-dark part was kind of a FAIL.  The directions said to put the water beads in light for 5-7 hours and mom left them in the light for much longer than that, but they really didn't glow.  We tried them in our bath at night with no real dice.  That didn't stop us from having a good time, of course.  We asked for shaving cream (and then colored shaving cream) and glow sticks to "paint" with -- we even discovered that the glow sticks stuck to the shaving cream on the wall and we used those to "build" shapes.  The water beads didn't glow much out of the bath either.  Mom said they worked slightly better under the black light, but obviously she didn't want to put that close to the bathtub.  Good thing a water bead bath is fun all on its own!

impossible to take pics in the dark, but i'm making shapes on the shaving cream here.

Castle Made of Sand: Water Bead Sand Castle

After our iced up water beads defrosted, mom and I decided to make some jewelry with them using beach grass.  But because they were so plumped, they didn't hold up well enough to wear .  So we decided to decorate our King Turtle Knight's castle with them -- mom wanted them to be like flags, I wanted them to be shooting cannons.  Either way, they looked really pretty sparkling in the sun.  When we get sick of using just water in our water table and add sand back in, I'm guessing these will make a reappearance.

giving King Turtle Knight a legit armor suit of shells

Just Freeze: Frozen Water Beads

Mom brought a pack of water beads with us on vacaye and, lucky for us, spotted this idea while we were at the shore.  After soaking the beads for about 1/2 a day, mom split the lot into two big bowls and stuck them right in the freezer.  When we checked the next morning, we had quite the surprise.  Big ice crystals had formed around the water beads (although the beads themselves hadn't frozen).  We set up shop on the deck and went to work -- Cami set out bowls for her "doggie" and I mixed up concoctions.  And we stayed nice and cool in the process.  If mom can ever sufficiently clean out our freezer, we'll be doing this at home as well.

Walk on the Water: Giant Sensory Squish Bag

This one has been on our list for a while now.  But seeing as it required a trip to Home Depot and someone generous enough to let us use their backyard, we just had not gotten to it yet.  Fortunately the start of summer camp (for both of us), the extreme temps, and our super nice buddies all came together last week.  We followed Go Kids Yourselves' (formerly The Mommies Made Me Do It) tutorial -- mom picked up the 2 pack of 125 sq. ft. Husky Plastic sheeting from Home Depot (3.5 mil thickness) and we used up our pirate, gold and regular duct tape.  We used just one sheet and folded it in half, overlapped the edges, and then duct taped that baby up -- twice.  We left a small hole in one of the corners for the hose and spread it out in the backyard.  And we snuck some water beads in there, too.  Unfortunately, mom didn't make to sure to place it on level ground -- one corner was downhill from the others, which was ultimately the demise of our squish bag.  It took about 1 1/2 hours to fill this sucker up, so leave yourself plenty of time for the fill.  We got some minor leaks almost immediately and mommy and our friend scurried around duct-taping it up.  It seemed like it would hold, but with all the pressure on the one corner, they could tell it was a matter of time before it busted completely open.

So they taped up the corner and let us have at it.  Even with the leaking, we got in a good amount of time playing on it.  But once we started jumping, holes developed in the top, too.  And then it was more like a ghetto swimming pool, but it was a million degrees out, so it was kind of perfect.

It seems like lots of other people have made these with the same thickness of plastic sheeting and had no problem.  So we're not entirely sure what happened.  The thicker sheeting was significantly more expensive, though, so I'm guessing we won't be getting that.  We have another sheet and we'd like to  try it again - although our poor, generous buddies have a large patch of brown grass now in their yard, so probably not there!

Cool It Now: Tropical Water Table Play

Oh hello, summer.  We thought we'd hang on a bit longer without you, but you have once again dropped it like it's hot.  Can't get us down.  Oh no.  Sand, shells, water, ice, tropical flowers, water beads.  Naked Barbies.  Take that, hyperthermic heat index.

digging for treasure.

Barbie hair wash.

Kane's summer Mummer strut.

wash Cam's hair, too.

Blinded by the Light: Lightbox Water Beads

We recently combined two of our favorite things -- our lightboxes and water beads -- for a fun activity that occupied almost a whole afternoon.  Mom found some better water beads that didn't squish quite as easily as our last batch (we liked these better than these) and we used cooking utensils and silicone baking molds to scoop, pour, and sort water beads for a while.  Nothing too complicated here, just some sensory fun.

This made a bit of a mess, so mom found some small, shallow storage boxes at Target that fit nicely on the top of our lightboxes.  Since then, we've done lots more water bead play on our lightboxes -- it somewhat helps us keep the beads from squishing all over the floor.  Although it is such fun to send them bouncing in every direction -- mom loves it.

When the Volcano Blow: Mini Volcanoes

So the last time we made a volcano, it turned out a little ghetto.  We didn't have a great bottle to use and we didn't have any baking soda.  We still had fun, but making a proper volcano has been on our list for a while.  So we decided to use a few of the thousand juice cleanse bottles mom saved and make some mini volcanoes.  We used our old snowflake playdough to build a nice mountain around mine -- Cami didn't want playdough on hers, which turned out to be a good way to watch the scientific reaction.  We followed the same recipe as last time (with the correct ingredients this time) and had a blast erupting them over and over again.  And we even added in our water beads at the end to see if they'd erupt out of the volcano.  They didn't, but it was cool to see in Cami's bottle that it was because the reaction occurred at the top of the liquid in the bottle and the water beads had actually sunk down below it.