I won’t be posting 12 days in a row of gift ideas, but I had a little momentum from yesterday’s watercolor painting post, so you get two ideas back to back! A year ago, my son came home from school raving about jelly marble experiments he had been performing in science class. It turns out, my local toy store carried this fun item, and we started giving them as birthday presents (great price point).

At Christmas last year, we bought several variations of the jelly marbles and gave them to all of the 4-8 year old family members. I even thought about using them as stocking stuffers for my own children.

What to Buy: Be Amazing! Toys has several options that are fun gifts. You can give the Amazing Spheres or Jiggly Jewels. We have also given the Insta Snow. After testing everything, the original jelly marble (AKA Amazing Spheres) was the fan favorite.

What to Do: The Steve Spangler website gives great suggestions for parents/teachers. At our house, we filled cups with water and added food dye. We let a few marbles grow in each color, then started moving them around to different colors to see if the colors would combine. We left them in for many days to see how big they would grow. We cut them in half to check out the inside. We tried different types of liquid (like cranberry juice or milk), which made a big difference on the growth rate. Basically, I left them by the kitchen sink, and my children messed around with them every day. I did not have to supervise too much, and as long as they stayed near the sink, there was very little clean up.