Splash It! Pour It! Spill It!

Come summer and water theme parks and swimming pools abound with families and young children. Water play is delightful to a child of any age or ability. Children can spend long hours simply spraying water from the taps, watching it drip down their hands and getting wet. Allow them to explore it with their senses - to feel it, taste it, splash it, pour it, and spill it!

Learning Through Water Play

Water play encourages your child's mental, social, cognitive, and emotional growth. Water play activities with different equipments both engage children and allow for learning as they experiment. The objects could include a selection of containers of different sizes and shapes, plastic funnels and objects that float and sink. Pack them all together and you have an entire water lesson that exposes children to language arts, math, social skills, and science.

What children learn from water play often go unnoticed in our busy world. Squirting water or soap, filling balloons with water, pouring water from one vessel to another, making lemonade all give give children a sense of volume. A squirt bottle helps develop small muscle coordination and eye hand coordination. Pouring and measuring help them to understand science and math concepts like how much a cup or a vessel can hold, or that an object is heavier when it contains water. When children bathe their dolls they learn the important skill of personal hygiene. While playing all this in a group they also learn the much required skill of socializing. Water play should be encouraged during the summer months.

You can introduce them to water measurements like pH, conductance, and hardness. These lay the foundations of basic scientific knowledge. They can enjoy a bubble bath or beat up the water on their water table with an eggbeater. But teachers and caregivers should make sure the water table is clean at all times by changing the water and disinfecting it.

Some Water Play Activities

Water play can be enjoyed both indoors and outdoors. Here are some ideas to help children have fun and learn at the same time.

Let them enjoy a bath with their favorite water toy. It is a constant learning process as they watch bubbles come up, water getting filled in their buckets, water falling down their bodies and even dripping from their fingertips.

Water tables are a wonderful place for children to work together. For the water table it is best to design multi-height tables that can be used by both the disabled and the able bodied and children of all ages. Give the children different kinds of objects to choose from like bottles, cups, sponges, funnels, droppers, nets, plastic tubes, bowls, and strainers to pour and fill with water. Give them toys of different shapes, sizes and textures.

Another fun experience is washing. Take your 6 year old to wash the car. Allow him to help you do your dishes or water the garden. He not only enjoys feeling grown up but also experiences the science involved in cleaning and drying. Washing and drying clothes is also an activity that little children love to do.

Lead them to observe what happens when they mix things in the water like sugar, salt, detergent, paint, oil and scents.

Change the temperature of the water. Have them see water come to a boil and also water turning into ice. What happens to a hot vessel when water is poured over it? Try various methods to cool a glass of hot water.

Try making music from similar vessels containing different levels of water. Allow children to experiment with water levels, types of vessels and types of instruments used to make the music.

Outdoor play can involve the use of hoses, pools, squirt guns and lawn sprinklers. Apart from being a lot of fun they provide some respite on a hot summer day. Go out with the children on a rainy day and measure how much rain falls that day. Teach them the concept of evaporation and condensation through the rain cycle.

Design different art activities with water and paint. Spray water on a paper and drop different colors on it. Watch the mosaic it creates.

Water games can be fun during a picnic. Play water balloon catch, have fill a bottle relays and ice cube melt relays, or enjoy a variety of pool games.

Then of course there is the favorite sport of swimming. Be it for a swim to cool down on a hot summer day or practicing some serious swimming, children always need an adult to supervise. Make sure the water they swim in is safe and cleaned on a regular basis. Ensure that pools have a certified lifeguard. Define rules to play while they are in water so as to avoid accidents.

Water Safety

Whether placed in or out, any container of water is a possible hazard and must be supervised at all times. Adults should be aware that children can drown in less than 2 inches of water and hence it is very essential that there is constant adult supervision. Water can also make surfaces slippery. An adult should always be at arms length.

Concerns About Water

Another important aspect of water children must be exposed to is conservation and safety. Emphasize the importance of saving water. Develop schools projects on water conservation, misuse, and pollution. Talk about how water is important for survival. Encourage them to do their bit so that future generations can continue to have the same fun as they have had.