These edible water beads are so cool! Use colourful tapioca pearls as DIY water beads to create a fun and taste safe sensory play experience.
These colourful tapioca water beads are the perfect alternative to traditional water beads. They have the same texture as Orbeez except they’re completely safe to eat. And they’re perfect for exploring texture and colour!
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How to Make Edible Water Beads
Materials:
- 1 cup Quick cook tapioca pearls (white or coloured)
- Food colouring
Equipment:
- Small bowls (1 per colour)
- Dish or tub (for play)
Check Out The Video Tutorial:
Instructions:
Step 1: Find what you need
- Gather your supplies and materials.
Step 2: Cook the tapioca pearls
- Add 1 cup of tapioca pearls to about 10 cups of boiling water and stir.
- Once the tapioca pearls begin to float, cover the pot and cook the pearls for 3 minutes on medium heat.Turn off the heat and allow the pearls to sit for 2 more minutes.(Cooking instructions may vary. Cook the tapioca pearls according to your package directions.)
- Drain the pearls then scoop them into a bowl of cold water. Let them sit for 20 seconds.
Step 3: Colour the edible water beads
- Separate the pearls into small bowls (1 bowl per colour). Add 4 - 5 drops of food colouring to each bowl and stir to mix.Let the edible water beads sit in the colour for 15 minutes.
- Rinse the water beads in a fresh bowl of cold water to get rid of any extra food colouring.
- Add the edible water beads to a dish or tub for some taste safe sensory play!
- Your edible water beads are complete!
What kind of tapioca pearls do I need?
Make sure that you buy quick cook tapioca pearls! They only take about 5 minutes of cooking, versus an hour or more for regular pearls. Some even require soaking overnight, so read the package directions before you purchase.
If you’d like to dye your edible water beads fun colours, be sure to buy white or clear pearls (ours were a mix of white and coloured pearls), rather than the usual black pearls used in bubble tea. You can’t dye the black tapioca pearls.
Where can I buy tapioca pearls to make edible water beads?
You can buy tapioca pearls online on Amazon, but if you have a local Asian grocery store, check there first! The pearls will generally cost a lot less in local stores.
Why make edible water beads?
Regular polymer water beads (commonly known as Orbeez) expand to 1,000 times their size. They’re tiny and very easy to brush onto the floor before they grow. If they’re accidentally swallowed before they expand they can be extremely dangerous for babies, pets, and children.
While edible water beads still require adult supervision, they’re a lot safer since they’re completely safe to eat and they don’t expand inside the stomach and intestines.
Both regular and edible water beads are still a choking hazard, so they’re not recommended for children under 3 years old.
How to play with the edible water beads?
These water beads are perfect for scooping, pouring, squeezing, and rolling. Even grabbing a handful and feeling them run through your fingers is super fun!
Water beads are also great for counting and sorting games. And these tapioca water beads are perfect for squishing or smashing.
We recommend putting the edible water beads in a dish or tub and adding a bit of water. This will prevent the tapioca pearls from becoming sticky!
Do these DIY water beads stain your hands?
No, we found that very little colour transferred from the water beads to our hands when we played with them. If you play with them in a bit of water, any colour that comes off the beads just rinses right off!
How long will the edible water beads last?
Generally these edible water beads are best the first day you make them, but you can probably get another day or two of play out of them, depending on how clean your hands are.
To store the water beads, add them to a bowl or container with water and seal them with an airtight lid. Then keep them in the fridge until you want to play with them again.
We recommend throwing them away after 2 to 3 days, or whenever you’re worried they might have gone bad. They are, after all, a perishable food product.
What do these tapioca water beads taste like?
Plain tapioca pearls have a very watery, starchy taste. When added to bubble tea they’re soaked in a sugar or honey syrup, making them a lot more tasty. On their own they’re definitely edible, but not something you want to eat a bunch of – which is probably a good thing! The idea for these water beads is taste safe play, not an actual snack.
How many batches of edible water beads can you make from 1 bag?
This will all depend on the size of the bag and how many tapioca pearls you make at one time, of course. We used a 2.2 pound (1 kilogram) bag of pearls, which contains a little over 4 cups of pearls — or 4 batches.
1 cup of pearls is enough to fill the bottom of an 8 x 8 dish. So if more than 1 child is playing with the beads at a time, you may want to make a larger batch.
The vibrant colour of these edible water beads makes them so cheerful! Toddlers, preschoolers, and kids of all ages will have a blast playing with these DIY water beads. They’re soft, squishy, and so much fun!
Here’s even more sensory play ideas:
Our book Low-Mess Crafts for Kids is loaded with 72 fun and simple craft ideas for kids! The projects are fun, easy and most importantly low-mess, so the clean up is simple!
Where to buy:
You can purchase Low-Mess Crafts for Kids from Amazon, or wherever books are sold:
Amazon |  Barnes and Noble | Books-A-Million | Indiebound |  Amazon Canada
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