I recently did a Guest Post on Make, Do and Friend about fine motor skill play with water beads and we’ve been playing again with them again. This time doing some colour sorting.
In the summer we used sugar coated candies to colour sort into our stacking cups matching colour for colour. However with J being a little older now I wanted to introduce colour sorting again. Having a tub of mixed colour water beads – blue and green this provided the perfect opportunity.
We had been looking at transferring water beads using different equipment but J still prefers to use his fingers – as a challenge and to work a little on hand eye co-ordination I encouraged him to select only 1 green or 1 blue water bead at a time and transfer them across to our waiting container.
I didn’t have a dedicated tray for sorting into but rescued from the recycling when my husband buys muffins from the store I keep the containers and these are perfect for sorting as well as for using as a paint palette which we often do.
I plan on extending this with more colours to make it more complex but J found it a challenge to sort the water beads as they were so slippery so was spending a lot of time resorting the beads once he had them in the muffin tray.
Cerys Parker
Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, high school teacher and mum. Realising that life doesn't have to be put on hold and you don't just have to survive whilst the kids are young she shares ideas to inspire you to LIVE with the kids, with activities to do together, recipes to cook and enjoy and family travel to make memories to last a lifetime.
Lovely idea. I must try some sorting with my youngest.
What a great idea! I really must get some water beads!
i don’t know how he is managing – I just can’t pick up water beads – they fly off everywhere! I guess I am lacking in fine motor skills.
Neither can I – he just does – some kind of super human sucker fingers I think!!!!!!!!