Water play is good for children’s physical, mental, and social-emotional growth. Children increase their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination through actions like pouring, squirting, scrubbing, stirring and squeezing. By playing with others they develop social and language skill as they talk about wet, dry, filling, squeezing, squirting, etc. At the same time, they use their minds as they explore why certain objects sink in water and others float. Children learn mathematical concepts such as empty/full, shallow/deep, before/after and heavy/light in a hands-on way.

During Work Time and Small Group Time, the children in PK2/3 explored water in many different ways. They used cups, squirt bottle, sponges and tubes to build funnels to explore how water moves. They used plastic frogs and ducks to develop mathematical concepts such as “How many frogs are on your lily pad?” and “How many red/blue/yellow ducks do you have?” The children used nets to catch, count and sort fish, letters and numbers. Their most favorite activities were squirting and pouring colored water and washing cars with bubbles and sponges.