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In a rush? Here's the quick run-down.
One of the best toys for children is in your kitchen sink right now.
It's also in the clouds above you, and in a glass with ice cubes as well. In fact, it's covering 71 percent of the earth.
This priceless plaything, of course, is water.
In the context of early learning, you'll often see water play appear in sensory play water tables, or outdoors in your garden, sandbox or local park. The popularity of water play comes with good reason: it's accessible, simple to set up, and inexpensive. It offers near-limitless possibilities to the way children play, and allows them to develop their small muscles and stimulate learning in all sorts of direction.
But like any popular piece of your continuous provision, it's also easy for your water play area to be neglected. So if you're feeling like it's time for a refresh, down below you'll find some great ideas to help you rejuvenate your water play.
Before that, though, here's a refresh on what makes water play so magical in the first place.
One of water play's main benefits is its sensory nature. The feeling of exploring water can stimulate nerve endings in children's hands and bodies, giving them constant sensory feedback.
This, in turn, increases brain stimulation, which can often lead to more concentrated play, the perfect state for deep learning to be going on. While certain activities like splashing, jumping in or squirting water can be more exhilarating, it's often something that children find calming too.
Just like how we can get some much-needed relaxation time from a bath or swim, younger children often find running their hands through the water, pouring or exploring it in other ways to be a calming experience. All this makes it a great candidate for focused, more solitary play, as well as for cooperative playing alongside others.
Although often done inside a large water tray at a child's level, water play doesn't have to be just that. In general, the term describes any opportunity that your environment gives children to play and explore water. It could also be things like:
Water play can happen just as well at your water table as in the wet sand at the beach. What's most important in this process is giving children the space to follow their imagination and lead their learning, so that they can experiment with water on their own terms.
This natural propensity for water play amongst our youngest is also part of the reason why it provides so many opportunities for development, right the way across the spectrum of development.
We can see a huge host of developmental benefits from water play. They include things like:
The best (and only) way to make impactful change to your water play provision is to start with observations. That’s all an audit really is – looking at and understanding what’s going on right now, and making some decisions about what needs to change.
Take some time to see how children are interacting with the environment that you’ve created, and ask yourself some different questions to work out what needs to stay, what needs to go, and what needs to be changed. Things like:
The best (and only) way to make impactful change to your water play provision is to start with observations. That's all an audit really is – looking at and understanding what's going on right now, and making some decisions about what needs to change.
Take some time to see how children are interacting with the environment that you've created, and ask yourself some different questions to work out what needs to stay, what needs to go, and what needs to be changed. Things like:
Now that we've clarified how and why water play is so beneficial, let's take a look at some ways your water play areas could get a spruce up. We've trawled the internet for some inspiring ideas, and here are our eight favourites.
1. Try new liquids — like shaving foam
Alistair Bryce-Clegg does it again (if you haven't already checked out our interview with him – make sure to check it out over here).
In this fantastic set of watery activities from 2012, we particularly liked the first entry, that he calls rainbow rain. It's all about combining water, shaving foam and food colouring to see fantastical swirls of colour erupt through the shaving foam clouds into the water.
But you don't need to stop there. Why not think about some other liquids that could be combined with your water play to make interesting textures and effects – oil, milk and all manner of other liquids could be a great chance for children to explore mixing, viscosity and how liquids act differently with each other.
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A post shared by Sheila (@rascals_and_rainbows) on Sep 24, 2019 at 11:32pm PDT
2. Let children go with the flow
Any practitioner that's ever come into the bathroom to find overflowing taps and a few sopping wet socks knows that children are fascinated by controlling the flow of water.
One safe (and slightly less floody) way to let them freely explore this is with a water butt. It's also a great sustainable way to collect rainwater for playing with and watering the plants. The always fantastic Teacher Tom also has a great idea about repurposing an old water pump to let children control the flow of the water they're playing with.
Of course, another popular way to let children control the flow is to…
3. Build a water wall, or play with guttering
As you'll see from the picture below, building your own water wall isn't as hard as you might think. And the endless joy and interest that children get from controlling the water as it flows is a joy to see.
If you're not ready to build (or buy) your own yet, you can start by adding chutes or guttering to your existing water play area, letting children see what happens as they channel the water through the pieces of pipe.
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A post shared by Mooangel (@mooangel2018) on Sep 20, 2019 at 9:10am PDT
4. Try sponges and cloths to building fine motor skills
Adding sponges and cloths to your water provision can be a great way for younger children to develop fine motor control and strengthen those little finger muscles.
At the same time, it's an interesting experience for them to explore what happens as they squeeze and the water comes out between their fingers. A simple, but effective way to up your water provision for the younger children.
5. Model age-appropriate vocabulary
As with any good, open-ended activity, water play is a fantastic way to model language and vocabulary for engaged, concentrated children.
For the younger children, you could start by talking about the simple actions they're performing like ‘squeeze' and ‘pour', as well as naming some of the objects they're using.
As the children get older, you can start to use some more scientific or conceptual terms, such as talking about objects being ‘full' or ‘empty', or talking about the water ‘flowing'. Once you've got the children talking, it's also a great opportunity for them to practice their communication too, describing their plans, making predictions, or talking you through what they're doing as they're doing it.
6. Collect items from a walk, and test if they sink or float
Out on a nice walk? Why not get the children to pick up things they find, like leaves and pine cones, stones and twigs, and then explore what floats and sinks when you get back?
They might not quite grasp exactly why the two things behave differently (I'll be honest, it still stumps me), but it's great fun to guess together and see how they can explore their different ideas about light and heavy, flat and thin with their predictions.
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A post shared by Children Of The Forest (@children_of_the_forest_uk) on Sep 25, 2019 at 5:51am PDT
7. Add new containers to your water play table
When you're going through your audit, one thing you might notice is that all of your pourers, scoopers and holders are a little…samey.
Make sure you mix it up by having a bunch of differently-sized containers so that the children can learn about shape and space, and how different containers might take surprisingly difficult amounts (it's always exciting to see the looks of wonder as a big long thin container carries less than a short flat one).
As an added extra, why not take the time to mark various points on the containers so the children can start to explore concepts like half-full, and further explore the different volumes of the containers.
8. Try glow-in-the-dark water (yes, really!)
Another cracker from ABCDoes. To try out this activity, you just need to get your hands on a black light (you can easily find them on Amazon), some highlighter pens, and a few plastic containers.
By colouring the water with the highlighter ink, they'll glow brilliantly under the black light. In the rest of the post, Alistair has some great ideas for all the different activities you can try with this simple little tool.
Guidance from the Danish Health Ministry, translated in full to English.
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The full recommendations from a working group of over 70 nursery chains in the UK.
Please note: here at Famly we love sharing creative activities for you to try with the children at your setting, but you know them best. Take the time to consider adaptions you might need to make so these activities are accessible and developmentally appropriate for the children you work with. Just as you ordinarily would, conduct risk assessments for your children and your setting before undertaking new activities, and ensure you and your staff are following your own health and safety guidelines.
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