Is anyone else holding on to the last little bit of summer that’s left?  Pinterest keeps telling me that it’s time for back to school and fall, but I’m not ready just yet.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the fall; it’s probably my favorite season.  But I feel like summer just up and vanished and I’m not ready for that yet.

Today we’re talking about water sensory play, motor skills, and science with a fun activity that is super easy to put together with things you probably already have at home.

Plus, I’m sharing some tips for additional key words and learning opportunities to help take the lesson further if you’d like.   Of course, you can do some, all, or none of these depending on your child – I promise they are still learning and getting great sensory play and fine motor skills practice even without the questions.  Play is learning for kids.

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Easy Water Transfer Activity for Toddlers & Preschoolers

Little loves this.  He’s almost three and this holds his attention for a solid 15-20 minutes whenever we do it.  We’ve done this water transfer activity inside over a large towel in the kitchen and outside when the weather is nice – so it’s not only a summer activity, I suppose.

Supplies

• Various sized containers for holding water
  • We used a larger bowl with a couple smaller buckets.  But, we’ve also used a couple plastic storage bins, or just simple bowls and cups.
• Sponges
• Water
• A large towel if you’re doing the activity indoors
• Shovels or other scoops are optional.

Directions

Be sure to talk with your child each step of the way to help them understand what’s going on and to give them specific things to look out for.

1. Fill one container with water and set up other containers adjacent to it.
2. Dip sponges into the water until they are saturated.
3. Carry sponge to empty buckets and “squeeeeezzzeee” all the water out.
4. Repeat until you’ve moved all the water out of it’s original container.
5. You can also continue using other spoons and shovels or other scoops to move the water, too.
   1. It’s fun for kids to be able to explore the different ways to move the water around – including just dumping it, which we definitely did over here, too!

Take it a Step Further

If you’d like to use this activity for a home school unit, or just include some additional learning to your play, here are some fun questions that you can incorporate into this activity.

Key Words

Whenever we do activities like this, I really like to give Little the words to use to describe what’s happening.  I don’t think he fully grasps the scientific concepts yet, but I think it’s good to give him language to use for what’s happening and I’ve seen how exposing him to these words allows him to make connections when he sees these things happening in the world around him. So, I’ll give him the words and explain them on a level that makes sense to him.

Absorb: to soak up

ASK: “See how the sponge is dry?  When we put it in the water, it will fill up with water.  When it soaks up the water, it is absorbing the water.”

Saturated: soaked; holding as much water as it can;

ASK: “Now, after the sponge absorbs the water, it is saturated.  Do you think it can hold any more water?  Let’s test it out.  Is it full now?  That is saturated.”

Observe these concepts in the world around us:

Real life examples of this could be when you wipe up spills with towels, or change a wet diaper in the morning.

More Questions to Consider

These questions are a great way to allow children to recall what happened and talk about the activity.  It helps practice with sequencing and some questions even allow them to work on some pre-math skills (which is biggest/smallest?) and practice color recognition for the littlest ones.

1. What are the supplies that we used?
2. Which container is the biggest/smallest?
3. What colors are our containers?
4. How does the water feel?
5. What were the steps that we followed?
6. What happened to the sponge when we put it in the water?
7. What happened when we squeezed out the sponge?
8. Can you draw a picture of what we did today?

Of course any of these questions can be tailored to your child – they’re just some fun talking points and additional ways to incorporate learning.  Like I mentioned though, even without the questions, this is a really fun little experiment that kids will enjoy.

And it’s a great way to keep them occupied and entertained, which I think we can all agree is a win with young children!

PINT IT FOR LATER:

If you have fun water play activities, I’d love you to share them!  We are all about fun, simple play over here!