Water play activities are one of the best way to engage kids and make them learn through the summers. With temperatures rising and kids being home through the holidays we all need some respite from keeping them entertained. These actvities are a perfect blend of free play activities that offer ample learning opportunities.
Water Play activities can benefit children in several ways:
- Sensory Stimulation: Water play engages multiple senses, including touch, sight, and hearing, which helps in sensory development and exploration.
- Fine Motor Skills: Pouring, scooping, squeezing, and splashing water during play activities strengthen hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.
- Gross Motor Skills: Water play encourages children to move, jump, and splash, promoting the development of gross motor skills and physical coordination.
- Cognitive Development: Water play fosters curiosity, problem-solving, and creativity as children experiment with water flow, buoyancy, and cause-and-effect relationships.
- Emotional Regulation: Playing with water can have a calming effect on children, helping them regulate emotions, reduce stress, and enjoy sensory experiences.
Here are 25 Water Play Activities to beat the heat this summer in the most fun way:
- Sink and Float Experiments: Kids use items from nature, such as sticks, leaves, flowers, rocks, etc., and make guesses as to wether each object will sink or float.
- Water Xylophone: Take 6-7 jars and fill each glass with water in varying quantity, in order from empty to full. Test out the sound of each glass as you fill them so you can get just the tone you want . Adding food colouring, makes it extra fun.
- Lemon Water Play: A simple activity where you add whole lemons and ice in a big bowl of water! Make the child transfer these using a trainer from one bowl to another. The lemons smell fantastic, and it gives kids something to scoop and transfer.
- Underwater Alphabet Search: Grab some small aquatic-animal toys, shells, a marker, some blue food colouring, and a water bin. Write a letter on each shell with a permanent marker, then dump everything into the bin. Toddlers can flip over the shells to reveal and identify the letters.
- Paper Magic in Water: Draw or write alphabets or numbers with a marker on the inside layer of a folder tissue such that nothing is visible on the top layer. Then put the tissue in a water tub and see the drawing show up on the top layer like magic.
- Rubber Band Fishing: Put plastic rubbers bands in a water tub and give your child a stick to take them out and put it in a bowl. To make it tougher you can also make another stick stand on play dough and ask them to stack the rubber bands one that stick.
- Colour Mixing Water Play: Let kids drop in colour in a small bowl of water with a dropper. Let them observe how colours mix and change.
- Colour Sorting Water Bin: Add different colour toys in a tub with water and ask kids to scoop out specific colours.
- Walking Water Experiment: A great way to see capillary action in motion. Fill paper cups with water and add a different colour to each cup. Put a common paper through all colourful jars and see the colours magically mix and blend.
- Ice Transfer: Fine Motor Activity – All you need is slippery ice cubes in a tub of water and a tong. Ask your child to use the tong to take out the ice cubes.
- Rain In A Jar Science Activity: Fill your glass or jar nearly to the top with tap water. Make a great, big rain cloud of shaving cream on top of the water. Drip the diluted food colouring onto your cloud and watch the rainstorm of colour.
- Pool’s Eye (Bull’s Eye): Add water to the inflatable pool and add a pool tube to it. Make children stand at a distance, away from the pool, and hand them each a ball. Now, ask the toddlers to throw the ball inside the tube. Ask them to say “pool’s eye” if the ball lands inside the tube.
- Frozen Paint: Freeze water with different colours in an ice tray. You can even add a popsicle stick while freezing to make it easier to hold. Take them out when they freeze and paint with them.
- Sponge Bombs: You only need some sponge, some elastic bands, tie them and soak in water. Have a fun family water fight.
- Washing Dishes: All you need is a bin, some toy dishes, dish soap, and water. Teaches practical life skills.
- Ocean Sensory Table Play: Using nets and toy sea creatures, create a simple sensory bin for your child to explore. Toddlers love scooping out the animals, grabbing them with their hands ,and making them swim. Be sure to ask questions about each animal.
- Nature/ Flower Soup: Collect some flowers, leaf, sticks etc and feel their textures in water, encourages kids to explore all the sights, smells, and textures of nature.
- Foam Bubble Activities: Just combine dish soap/ tear free bubble bath and water in a blender, whip it with a hand mixer on med-high for one minute. You can also, incorporate food colouring. Allow them to enjoy playing with the foam.
- Pom Pom Water Fun: Gather pom-poms of all sizes (though larger ones are best) to set up this activity, soak the pom poms of different sizes and discover the density.
- Water Balloon Spoon Race: Similar to lemon race scoop out balloons in spoons and run the race.
- Land Animal Rescue Game: Take a tub filled with water and throw in some land and sea animals. Add bubbles or make foam with shampoo to add some drama. Allow kids to use strainers or tongs to rescue land animals.
- Gross Motor Water Transfer: Pouring and transferring water from one container to another is a useful skill for little ones to learn. Use a variety of vessels like jars, bowls etc and use strainers and funnels to help them practise their motor skills better.
- Colour Sorting Water Bin: Freeze small animal figures in ice moulds with water. Once frozen, give them to the kids to identify and break out the ice to rescue the animals.
- Fish Ice Play: Make ice fish using a fish-shaped mould, and don’t forget to add colours to each of them so your little ones can explore colour mixing.
- Float some boats: Make this quick boat origami and the kids can spend the afternoon taking their boats out to sea.
Enjoy these fun filed activities with your kids and see them grow with creativity & life skills. You can also check out my blog on 50 pre-writing skills for toddlers to help your kids stay mindfully occupied this summer vacation.
Do try these out and tell me which one you enjoyed the most and is your favourite in comments!
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