There is no end to the benefits of water play for young children -
It enables them to practice and improve their hand eye coordination and teaches them manipulative skills such as lifting, pouring and controlling.
It introduces them to scientific concepts such as heavy/light, sink/float and empty full.
Mathematical skills, like measuring and estimating, are reinforced.
The list goes on.
The point is, playing with water teaches kids a ton of things!
To top it all off, it is a soothing and relaxing form of play that is forever attractive to little ones!
So when I pulled out buckets of water for the girls to bath their babies with this week, they were thrilled!
The house got very quiet as they scrubbed those dolls clean!
In our Bible studies we've been learning about God fulfilling His promise to Abraham and Sarah to give them a son.
This generated lots of talk about babies and how to care for them.
Thus our baby bath time!
Once they were both good and soaked and beginning to peel out of drenched clothes, I pulled out some new tools to work with in their water play containers.
This basically included containers, spoons and a funnel.
They surprised we with just how long they spent simply transferring the water from one container to another then dumping it out and starting all over again!
This activity was a part of their math studies and an idea I got from their MathArts book.
There were other discoveries to made too though!
Piper placed her bare foot in her bucket of water which, of course, was followed by Taitum placing her socked foot into hers!
They just had to see what it felt like!
Taitum also enjoyed drinking the water.
A lot of it.
And it was warm! :P
Next, we spent some time learning about color mixing by adding food dye to jars of water and predicting what color it would change into once a second color was added.
Fascinating, can't you tell?!
Finally, the girls set to work stirring the colorful water and adding beads, sequins and glitter to the jars.
They took time to guess which items would float and which would sink.
But mostly they enjoyed mixing up this sparkly stew!
Once the lids were firmly in place there was a lot of shaking and watching the pretty contents swirl around!
Water play is such a simple activity to provide for children.
Some water and a few manipulatives and they are set for quite a while!
What water play activities have your kids enjoyed?
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