Early Years Activities: The Ultimate Water Play Ideas

Water play is a fantastic way to combine fun and learning in early years activities. It stimulates creativity, supports sensory development, and enhances motor skills. In this guide, we’ll explore some of the best water play ideas to engage your children, from artistic outdoor projects to sensory-rich experiments.

Water Gun Painting: A Fun Early Years Art Project

This summer, elevate your art projects with the exciting and creative activity of water gun painting. Water play and early years activities blend beautifully here, allowing children to become artists with a splash!

To get started, you’ll need non-toxic washable paint, a few water guns, canvases, and a sturdy stand to hold the canvases. Simply fill the water guns with diluted paint and let the children unleash their inner artists by spraying vibrant colours onto the canvas.

See the detailed step-by-step guide on how to set up and enjoy water gun painting, by Kids Kubby.

Summer Potions; One For The Senses

This delightful water play activity combines citrus fruits, coloured water, and flowers to create a sensory-rich experience that your children will love.

“This smells delicious, let’s make some potions!”

Encourage children to squeeze the citrus fruits, adding a few drops of food colouring to create vibrant, fragrant potions. They can tear petals from the flowers and add them to their mixtures for extra sensory delight. Experimenting with different combinations and observing how the colours and scents change. This activity not only stimulates their creativity but also helps develop fine motor skills.

Water play activities like Summer Potions are a fantastic way to engage your children for extended periods. Providing them with a variety of materials to explore helps sustain their interest and enhances their sensory and motor development.

“I love it when it goes bubbly and I can see the green and the rainbows, it smells like unicorns!”

Learning Opportunities: There is an opportunity to learn about different parts of flowers, their colours, and their scents. Children can practice counting petals and sorting flowers by type. This hands-on exploration can enhance their understanding of nature and improve their observation skills.

DIY Floating Boat

Spark your child’s creativity and engineering skills with this delightful floating lolly pop stick boat. You’ll need lolly sticks, paper straws, scrapbook paper, and a hot glue gun. This hands-on project allows children to build their own miniature boats and watch them sail, providing both a creative outlet and a basic lesson in buoyancy and design.

For detailed instructions check out the floating boat guide by Hunny I’m Home DIY.

DIY Easy Water Play Race

Transform a simple afternoon into an exciting water play adventure with the DIY boat race by @craftmonsterz.

To create your boats, you’ll need bottle tops, playdough, toothpicks, and leaves. Enhance the water’s visual appeal by adding a few drops of blue food colouring to the container.

This activity promotes fine motor skills, creativity, and friendly competition. Plus, it’s a fantastic way for children to understand basic principles of motion and airflow.

Early Years Ice painting

Engage children in the fascinating process of ice painting, a fun and educational activity that combines art and science. This activity helps children learn about the states of water, from freezing to melting, while also promoting fine motor skills and creativity.

Ice Painting Instructions:

1. Freeze water in ice cube trays or larger containers to create ice blocks.
2. Set Up the Painting Area: Place the ice in bowls or trays. Provide paint and paintbrushes
3. Encourage the children to paint directly onto the ice. They can observe how the paint interacts with the melting ice, blending colours and creating unique patterns.
4. Explore and Learn: As the children paint, discuss what happens to the ice when it melts and how the sun or warm air affects the process. Encourage them to touch the ice and describe how it feels.

“This ice will melt quickly when the sun comes back out!”

Colourful Water Play

Dive into a vibrant world of sensory exploration with colourful water play! This engaging activity allows children to explore colour mixing, develop hand-eye coordination, and enhance their sensory experience through various textures and materials.

Instructions:

1. Fill several bowls with water and add different food colouring to create a variety of vibrant colours.
2. Provide an assortment of materials like feathers, balls, metal spoons, and sequins for the children to explore.
3. Encourage the children to observe how different colours blend and how the materials interact with the water.
4. As the children play, prompt them to describe what they see and feel, fostering communication skills. Encourage imaginative play by suggesting they create colourful potions or underwater worlds.

This activity is simple to set up at home and provides endless opportunities for sensory play and learning. It’s perfect for a sunny day outdoors or a fun indoor activity.

These water play ideas are perfect additions to your early years activities, combining educational value with endless fun. From creative art projects to sensory-rich experiments, each activity is designed to engage young minds and support their development.

For more early years activities, take a look at; Colourful Play Ideas for Early Years Development