One night last week I was out shopping and stopped in the Dollar Store. I found these folding vases and picked up three of them to do an experiment with the boys.

I wasn’t interested in folding vase part as much as the “designer hydrating beads”. After I got home Dave entertained Luke while Adam and I got to work.

I had Adam pour the beads (we had blue, green, and clear ones) into an empty container and make observations about them as we went along (were they big or little? hard or soft?).  Then I added water to the tote and let him play for a little bit.

After he was done playing, we put the lid on the box and set it on the counter. The first thing he asked me the next morning was if he could see his “speriment”.

We talked about the changes to the beads. Adam told me they were bigger, squishier, and more breakable (this is true, for some reason the clear ones seemed to split a lot).

I asked him what he thought happened to all the water that had been in the tote and he said, “I have no idea”. So I tried to explain that the beads absorbed the water and that’s why they were bigger and squishier. I’m not sure how much of that lesson stuck though, since he and Luke were much more interested in playing than learning.

Which was fine with me. I added some small animal figurines to the beads and Adam had fun finding and rescuing them. They played together nicely for a long time (we had to stop after Luke got bored playing with the beads and started trying to eat them).