’Tis the season for soothing, stimulating WATER play—and you don’t need an in-ground pool or the beach to support hours of it. Setting up a water play center in your home outdoor space is a super way to spark hours of imaginative, sensory-rich play. What is a water play center? It’s any place with a basin or container that can hold water and the okay to play.
To a small human, a bowl of water and a measuring cup can qualify as a water play center, so make yours as simple or elaborate as you like. Each week you can offer a new “surprise” tool and wonder aloud: “I wonder how we could use this in our water play center?” Whether or not you already have a setup, here are some ideas to help make water play extra special:
Step 2: Find a spot where kids can comfortably and easily play with water.
If you have outdoor space, do you have a water source? If not, where in the space can you easily transport bins or buckets of water?
Step 3: Decide what will contain the water for play.
Kiddy pools, bins and even large cooking pots work well. Feeling crafty? Wrap a tarp around a few pool noodles to form a pond. Doing your water play indoors? Try the bathtub, the shower or the sink. Or, lay towels on the floor and place a plastic bin or cooking pot in the middle.
Step 4: Gather water play tools.
Here are some ideas:
Cups and containers of all shapes and sizes
Fun kitchen gear (funnels, basters, measuring scoops, etc.)
Washcloths, sponges, paintbrushes or other absorbent items
Rocks or household items that kids can “wash” and use to explore sinking and floating
Pool noodles, drain pipes or other items that can be used as water channels
A smock (could be a raincoat or just a change of clothes) if your child prefers to stay dry during play
Recycled containers with the top/bottom cut off to create channels for water to flow
Action figures or toys that kids can create a water playground for to help them play and "cool off"
Sliced cucumber or citrus to add scent and explore sink and float
Objects from nature (e.g. rocks, leaves, sticks, flowers) that kids can use to create a pretend water habitat
Step 5: Let the water play begin!
To get kids really engaged, turn the “launch” of your water play center into a moment. Share a “Hurrah!” as you and your child turn on the faucet or pour the first bucket of water into your setup. Once the water is in, plop in a tool or two, and enjoy some splash, scoop, pour and explore action. Let the water play roll! Need some water play ideas? Try our Ice and Water Play or Build a Water Run DIY activities.
Tips for Grown-Ups: Supporting Kids' Water Play and Communication Skills
Water play is a type of play that universally calms, soothes, draws kids in and sustains their focus. This makes water play an inviting time for grown-ups to practice the various ways we communicate with kids when they are actively engaged in playful learning. Having a conversation requires a complicated symphony of skills and can be a big undertaking for kids. When we ask a child who is deeply engaged in play to talk with us, we are asking a lot and the deeper the child’s engagement, the more potentially distracting our outreach can be.
Before engaging kids in conversation, we can look for a few signs they are ready. For example, if kids are ready to chat, they might:
Engage you in talking
Look up when you are near and make eye contact
Hand you an object
If kids do not show these types of signs and remain focused on play, we can still support their play by:
Sitting nearby and observing
Mirroring their play
Saving the conversation for later
Why is this activity great for kids?
Setting up a water play center can inspire hours and hours of independent play for your family. Water play offers limitless chances for kids to use their imaginations, tinker and experiment, and even explore STEM concepts. No matter how sensitive a child is to sensory input, water is simultaneously stimulating and calming, making it an ideal material for sensory play.
By creativity, we mean the ability to both imagine original ideas or solutions to problems and actually do what needs to be done to make them happen. So, to help kids develop creativity, we parents need to nurture kids' imaginations and give them lots of chances to design, test, redesign and implement their ideas.
"Creativity is as important now in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
Why, you ask? For one, it is through being creative that a person is able to get senses, sensibility and spirit working together. Simply put, without creativity, we don't think our kids will live a full life.
On a more practical level, it's also the means by which humans of all ages make an impact on the world and other people around them. A lot of heavy stuff is going to go down in our kids' lifetime, and their generation will need to imagine and implement solutions to big and very complicated problems. Although our kids are still far from public office or the boardroom, today's political and business leaders worldwide are already pointing to creativity as the most important leadership quality for the future.
Although years from the art studio or design lab, little kids can learn to think and act creatively if you give them time and the right practice.
Imagination
Category:
Thinking Skills
What is Imagination?
Imagination is defined in many ways, but one we like is, "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality." This is no small task to little kids, and yet young childhood is a time in which imagination is developed more than any other. How does imagination develop in childhood? Through an increasingly sophisticated life of make believe.
We all likely have a sense of what we mean by make believe or good old "pretend play." How do experts define it, though? To some, there are different types of make believe that vary in sophistication and make pretend play different than other types of play. For example, kids may use objects to represent something else (e.g. a block becomes a cell phone). Or, they may start to give an object certain properties (e.g. a doll is asleep or a tree is on fire!). Still yet, they may themselves take on the properties of someone or something else.
From there, pretend play evolves into acting out scenarios or stories, those getting increasingly intricate as imagination develops. As kids' pretend play grows more sophisticated, these stories come to involve not only the creative use of objects, but multiple perspectives (e.g. good and bad guys in the same story), and/or the playful manipulation of ideas and emotions (e.g. I am sad, but then become happy after I save the village from certain doom).
Why does it matter?
An ever growing body of research substantiates the many benefits of pretend play including the enhanced development of: language and communication skills; self-control and empathy; flexible and abstract thinking; and creativity. These are the skills that will help kids balance emotions, form healthy relationships, work effectively on teams, stay focused in school, be successful at various jobs and solve the problems of an increasingly complicated world. An individual's creativity in particular, both requires and is limited by her imagination.
Sensory
Category:
Body Skills
What is Sensory Development?
Although some scientists classify as many as 20 senses, when childhood educators talk about "developing the senses," we typically mean developing the five standard senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. In addition to honing these senses, educators care about sensory integration, which is the ability to take in, sort out, process and make use of information gathered from the world around us via the senses.
Why does it matter?
The better kids are able to tune and integrate their senses, the more they can learn. First, if their senses are sharper, the information kids can gather should be of greater quantity and quality, making their understanding of the world more sophisticated. Further, until the lower levels of the brain can efficiently and accurately sort out information gathered through the senses, the higher levels cannot begin to develop thinking and organization skills kids need to succeed. Senses also have a powerful connection to memory. Children (and adults) often retain new learning when the senses are an active part of the learning.
So, if kids have more sensory experiences, they will learn more, retain better and be better able to think at a higher level. Makes the days they get all wet and dirty in the sandbox seem better, doesn't it?
Age: 0 to 8+
Time: 1 hour+
Materials: bins, bowls and/or pot, various kitchen tools, water
