Summer means outside time and water! Living in Hawaii it’s warmer than most places most of the year but summer is different. With longer and more relaxed days it’s the perfect time for water activities! Here are a few simple water activities that have been on rotation at our house!
Sink or Float
This simple and fun STEM activity is perfect for kids of all ages. We did this for ack’s preschool class and had so much fun! First, we made a little foil boat and filled the sink with water. We predicted if each item would sink or float in our boat. If you don’t want to make a boat you can just drop the items in to see what will happen. Just be sure you have a variety of items that will sink or float.
Another easy variation would be to put the same item on the boat to see how many the boat could hold. You can also have them build different boats to see which one will hold the most weight!
Ice Painting
This one requires some planning ahead but it’s still simple and quick. Just fill your ice cube tray with water and some paint, cover it with foil, and push some popsicle sticks through the foil (it’ll be the handle for them to paint). Once it freezes, put a paper on a tray and let them paint with it! I added cute printables from the Magic Playbook for some added fun and imaginary play. We’ve also tried it without the printables and the boys had fun! Having the paint frozen helped to change up this simple activity and keep their attention while!
Water Sprayer Letters
The boys love these blasters that I bought from Target this summer! I like that it works their gross motor skills and can be used in a variety of ways! From water play to seeing how high the water will go up with different amounts of pressure, they’re learning a lot while they play! One simple way to use it to work on letters is by writing letters on a wall or the ground with chalk. Then call out the letters for them to squirt.
Adaptation for younger kids would be using colors or their names. Jake is still not ready to learn all his letters but showed interest in his name. So I wrote his name in chalk and as he squired each letter we repeated it. He had fun watching the chalk disappear!
For older kids, you could do the same with sight words or numbers. Call out a word for them to squirt or a math problem and squirt the answers!
In place of the blaster you can use a spray bottle or water gun. I’ve been trying to use items that I already have rather then making tons of new purchases!
Swimming for Letters
During the summer we put out a small pool for the boys to play in! They do a lot of free play with the few random toys they have in there. On days that they need a little more direction a simple thing I’ll do is throw magnetic letters into the pool from there we have so many different things we’re able to work on. This usually starts them off and they’re able to start playing on their own in no time! Here are some ideas on how to use the letters.
-Call out a letter and once they find it, name something that starts with the letter.
-Make the sound of the letter for them to find.
-Give them several letters to find, then go over the letters with them.
If you don’t have a pool you can do this in the bathtub or a try of water!
Ice Treasure
Playing with ice is a fun way to cool down! One easy way to play with ice is to hide things in it and have the kids melt the ice and find the items. This activity is straightforward and is easy to modify! We’ve done it several ways, we did it with ice cube dinosaurs and had fun with ice on watermelon day!
This is by far the simplest way to do this activity. I filled an empty milk carton with water and dropped in some bugs that we used for our bug themed activities (to see what other bug themed activities we did click here). I then put out some tools, cold water, warm water, and salt. I let the boys figure out how to get the toys out and we talked about which supplies helped the most.
Honestly though, it took awhile and they ended up throwing it on the ground to get the items out. Even though that’s how it ended they still worked on their problem solving skills, fine motor skills, and predictions so I’d still call it a success!
Color Water Mixing
The boys can play with water forever so when I need something to keep them busy I know anything with water will keep them busy and happy!
One easy way to mix things up is by adding color. I try to use primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, as much as possible. This way they work on their color mixing which helps them understand cause and effect, predictions, and problem-solving.
For this easy activity, I filled different-sized containers with water and added food coloring to them. Then they dumped and poured to mix the colors. Having containers of different sizes helps them to start to understand capacity, even if a jar is taller it doesn’t mean it can hold the most water. I usually spend a few minutes talking to them and making predictions on the colors, guessing which one holds the most water, etc then let them play on their own!
These fun and simple water activities are perfect to cool down this summer! If you’re looking for easy things to do outside check out this post!