How to make the most of your summer with water play

There is a saying that goes “If your children are starting to climb the walls, remove the walls and play with water”.

This is because water play can entertain and engage children of all ages, but also has therapeutic qualities which mean that is helps to calm, regulate and ground children in a way that other play opportunities do not. 

While water isn’t free, it’s relatively inexpensive and can be played both indoors and outdoors, if you’re feeling brave! Water play doesn’t have to be complicated; you don’t need to buy water trays or any special equipment to create a meaningful play experience for your child. 

How to keep children entertained with water? 

Water is fun and engaging on its own, so we always suggest keeping it simple at first. This could be going on a puddle safari just after it’s rained or taking a tray into the garden and filling it up with jugs from a water butt or tap. Then, as their confidence grows and interest dwindles, introduce new and exciting objects to explore with the water, such as pipes, spoons, old clean Calpol syringes, recycled guttering, bigger jugs and watering cans, and any other interesting, child-safe objects you have lying around your home. 

Below we suggest more things you add to water to make it exciting. 

Make marks 

By simply adding clean paint brushes, paint rollers and sponges, your child can use water as a fun mark-making toy. This is fantastic for a sunny day where children can use all their large motor movements to make water marks on your windows, bricks or patio and the sun will simply make them disappear, leaving no mess for you to tidy. 

Get cleaning 

Children naturally love to do anything that they see us doing, so if they’re desperate to help with any kind of cleaning, let them get involved. You can encourage them to help you clean patio furniture, the car or their own toys using a bucket, sensitive washing up liquid and a sponge or cloth, and it keeps them entertained for hours on end. 

Freeze it 

Ice cubes can be a perfect addition to water play, especially in the warmer weather. You can freeze large cubes, or recycled tubs of water, or why not make it more fun by freezing plastic animals into water that they have to try to dig out? This provides hours of fun and will also spark some scientific investigations as they work out how to best unfreeze the ice. 

Mix up colours 

You could add a small amount of child-safe paint to different tubs of water to encourage your child to explore and investigate colour mixing. This is so much fun and might even turn into some potion-making, or other role play. 

Keep it inside 

Water play isn’t only for outside – you can just do it in the bath instead! Simply take any of the ideas you love and transfer them to the bath! You could paint on the shower screen, or clean up the tiles in the bathroom! The play ideas are endless in our app, why not try it free for yourself? You will find thousands of ideas of how to support your child through play, while also learning more about their development along the way. Download here: My First Five Years on the App Store (apple.com) 

Make sure that you always supervise children around water, and ensure that it is clean and safe to use in play.  

Ideas for babies, toddlers and children 

Babies 

Keep it simple for babies by filling a shallow tray with water that they can then explore with their hands or feet. You can encourage them to explore the water by gently pouring some water over their hands or feet, or taking small droplets from your fingers and sprinkling them onto their skin. 

Toddlers 

Toddlers often explore with larger gross motor movement and need more space for their water play. So, garden brushes, sponges and paint brushes are great additions to water play for toddlers. With these they can use large shoulder pivots to make marks on walls or shower screens during water play. 

Children 

Children are starting to explore more intricate fine motor movements during their play, so you could add small, thin, tall cups, jars, spoons, ladles and tubes to their water play. Anything that requires more precision and control is brilliant for a child.