Endless fun with water!
Water is fascinating to children and is appropriate to all ages. Many children like playing with water whether it’s jumping in puddles, splashing in the sink when washing their hands, playing at bath time or having fun in a paddling pool!
Water play can be a sociable occasion and exciting, or it can be very calming. It is a sensory experience for your child, so follow their lead and see what they are enjoying and how they are responding.
New words to learn from playing with water:
- Rhyming words: splish splash splosh, drip drop drip drop
- Action words: pouring, emptying, dripping, splashing, spilling
- Describing words: cold, wet, damp, soaking, full, empty, sparkling, bubbly
- Rhymes and songs: Incy Wincy Spider, Rain Rain Go Away, Row Row Your boat, It’s Raining it’s Pouring
Top tips:
- In a washing up bowl or larger tub, offer different sized cups and jugs: your child will enjoy pouring the water and filling and emptying the cups, and you can talk about the jugs being full, half full, empty, overflowing, heavy – this supports early understanding of maths concepts such as volume and measure
- Add some other resources for your child to explore: such as bubbles, ice, colouring, sieves, funnels, colanders, tubing, or put some holes in plastic milk/water bottles and see what happens (you can experiment further by adding even more holes and making them bigger)
- Put a range of objects into your bowl of water to see if they sink or float: encourage your child to watch carefully to see what happens, and collect their own objects and try to predict what will happen – it doesn’t matter whether they guess correctly or not, as the purpose is to let your child ‘have a go’ and test out their ideas
- Make mixtures and potions: add mixing bowls and spoons and encourage your child to gather natural materials – this will inspire their imagination
- Watering the garden: a good opportunity to talk to your child about what plants need to grow, which watering can holds most water, how far can the hose spray, and so on
- Use a hose/spray to water plants or try and spray each other: great for fun and cooling down, developing hand-eye coordination, and strengthening finger muscles, shoulders, arms and wrists
- Remember: always supervise your child when playing with water, and keep a close eye on what objects they are collecting to stay safe
