I'm slightly addicted to metallic liquid watercolors. So I couldn't resist dyeing some sensory bin fillers in gold, silver, and copper.
The result? These beautiful metallic colored beans.
Quick and easy to make, these shimmery metallic beans are so much fun to play with.
I'm kind of obsessed with how they turned out. "They're magical," as my then five year old liked to say a lot at the time I made these.
Metallic Dyed Beans: What You'll Need
Here's what you'll need to make your own metallic colored beans:
- Liquid watercolors in metallic gold, metallic silver, and metallic copper - I use the brand found at Michael's.
- Dried navy beans or similar - How much you will use will depend on the size of the sensory bin container you plan to fill.
- Resealable bags (small, medium, or sandwich sized) - For dyeing the beans
- Paper towel - We'll use these when drying the beans after dyeing them.
Keep in mind that a bit of prep and dry time are required for this activity. But once you make the metallic beans, they'll last for a long time and can be reused for multiple activities.
How to Dye Beans for Sensory Play
Put some beans in a bag, add a few squirts of liquid watercolors, and then shake until the beans are well coated.
Repeat the process for all the colors you want. For instance, I made one batch of gold beans, one batch of silver beans, and one batch of copper beans.
Once the color is evenly distributed, place the colored beans on some paper towel to dry. They dried pretty quickly, within an hour or so. Once they are dry to the touch, they are ready for play.
Regular liquid watercolors don't seem to dye beans as well as food coloring so I wasn't sure how these would turn out. However, these metallic liquid watercolors have a thicker consistency than regular liquid watercolors, so they ended up doing a fantastic job at dyeing the beans. I mean look at how pretty they are! Oooh la la!
Here are some close up shots of the dyed beans...
Metallic Dyed Beans Sensory Bin
To set up this sensory bin, I simply put each color of dyed beans into a glass dish, arranged in columns, like so:
Now, I decided to keep this sensory bin quite simple. So, I didn't add any measuring spoons, cups, or scoops. Instead, I wanted the boys to simply explore the texture and color of the beans and see what they would do.
Up first tough is the classic swipe to mix up all the beans...
Here's how all those beans look when thoroughly mixed up together. Pretty, hey?
The boys would swish their hands around and try to pick up as many beans as they could in their hands.
My oldest, J, loved these metallic beans so much that they literally had him seeing hearts. "Mom, mom, mom! It's a heart!!" Well, look at that...it is a heart!
What do you think? What's your favorite color of the metallic dyed beans? I think I like the gold best.
