If you’ve spent any length of time looking online for creative ways to have fun with your kids, you’ve no doubt stumbled upon the sneaky little video that informs you that you can magically turn “water” into marbles with a few household ingredients.
Just like that. It’s magic! It’s marvelous!
It’s malarkey.
Really. It’s simply an outrageous, ingredient-wasting, kitchen-messing hoax. And I almost fell for it too!
But the spelling errors in the instructions tipped me off.
And the fact that I had seen these cool little ‘water marbles’ in fragrance jars and table displays before. As my momma always said, “if it seems too good to be true…it probably is”.
Here’s a little jelly spheres video that further demystifies the formula behind these highly-absorbent polymer balls {the same substance that soft contact lenses are made of, fancy that! Ever notice how they dry up and become hard when left out of saline/water?}.
These babies absorb and hold over 100 times their weight/size in water. The little white dish on the left contains 2 tablespoons of the “before” marbles…the vase on the left is what they look like “after” they’ve soaked up water for a day.
We had SO much fun with these bouncy, slippery marbles – in fact I’d find myself plunging my hands into the vase as I walked by for a little sensory therapy in the middle of the day. They’re rather irresistible.
We put a ‘batch’ of these out for the kiddos to play with at Bean & Bug’s birthday bash this summer, and apart from finding a few in random shoes and toys, most ended up smashed all over the grass by the end of the day. Which was fabulous, because those spots of grass were nicely watered by the shrinking marbles over the course of the next week.
You’ll find a pound of these fabulous little things right here on Amazon for around $10 {plus shipping & handling}, and after giving much of ours away {bagged up with growing instructions} as birthday party favors, we still have a good 3/4 of our supply.
