Water tables are great activity stations to keep kids engaged, especially during the summer, and are a constant part of my kids’ summer day routines. 💧
Water table activities present various opportunities for kids to enjoy, learn, and develop their abilities, like fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and arm strength.
These water table activities are also beneficial for kids to nurture their senses and foster imagination and creativity while having a good time.
Water Table Activities for Your Kids
You can curate countless literacy, math, sorting, and sensory activities with the water table as a medium for kids to learn and practice what they learned in a hands-on way.
Enhance the utility of the water table by incorporating tools like scoops, ladles, cups, spoons, funnels, and other materials like ice cubes, water beads, pom poms, rubber ducks, and nature items.
In this blog post, I have listed various activities for your kids to partake in using the water table as the medium of fun and learning. 😊
Search for Letters
Add foam letters to the water table, and make your kids use a slotted spoon to pick them out of the water.
You can call out the letters they have to pick out, or kids can fish them in the order of the alphabet. 🔤
This activity helps kids identify and recognize the letters of the alphabet.
Pro Tip:
Add a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters for kids to search and scoop out.
Search for Numbers
Add foam numbers to the water table, and make your kids use a slotted spoon to pick them out of the water. You can call out the numbers they have to fish out, or they can go in the order of the numbers. 🔢
This activity helps kids learn and recognize the numbers.
Make Imaginary Soup
A pretend play where kids make an imaginary bowl of soup for you.
Give your kids some ladles, spoons, and pots for them to start cooking. They can add flowers, leaves, and play fruits and vegetables to the water to make a delicious soup in their water table kitchen. 🥣
Squeeze Soap Sponges
My son enjoys this fun activity, which also doubles as sensory play.
Add a few drops of gentle soap and a small amount of water to sponge pieces and place them on the water table.
Kids can use their hands to squeeze out the soap from the sponges, thereby strengthening their muscles. 🧽
Create Small Worlds
Small worlds are real-life places and imaginary worlds recreated on a miniature scale using toys and props. Small-world pretend play helps kids foster their imagination and creativity. 🌎
Kids can use their toys and props to create small worlds on the water table. Some themes you can design with your kids are – penguin land, beach, ocean, the underwater world, and so on.
Build Lego Towers
This simple activity brings so much happiness to my son!
Kids can play with their Lego blocks and try to build towers in water for a change of environment from the usual playing surface, making it much more fun and exciting. 🗼
Pro Tip:
Freeze your kids’ Legos blocks and bricks in molds and ice cube trays. They can watch and play with Lego ice cubes until the ice melts and gives away, and then kids can build objects with unfrozen Lego blocks.
Set Up A Washing Station
Turn the water table into a fun washing station for your kids to work with and develop fine motor skills.
Squeeze a few drops of dish soap onto the water table. Kids can use scrub brushes and sponges to wash play fruits and vegetables, Lego blocks, and their toys. They can then pat the clean items dry with a cloth. 🧼
Fish for Magnetic Eggs
The classic fishing game with magnetic eggs instead of some fish!
Open the plastic eggs and add a magnet inside each of them. Make a fishing rod with a stick, a string, and a magnet tied to one end of the string.
Kids can use the fishing rod to fish the magnet eggs from the water table. 🥚
Sensory Play with Shaving Cream
Sensory play is a hands-on method to engage and nurture your kids’ senses and encourages them to explore and interact with objects.
Shaving cream is a great sensory medium to add to the water table for kids to dip their hands and play around with its foamy texture, making it even more exciting.
Conduct a Sink or Float Object Experiment
A simple experiment to introduce the concept of sinking and floating.
Make your kids gather objects from around the house and place them on the water table to determine whether it floats or sinks. You can try this experiment with shells, sponges, Lego blocks, rubber ducks, and nature items.
Pro Tip:
You can encourage your kids to predict whether the object will sink or float before placing them in the water to make the activity more fun.
Transfer Water with Sponge
Make your kids transfer water from the water table to an empty bowl using a piece of sponge. Let the sponge soak up the water, and then the kids can squeeze it to release water into the bowl. 🧽
The constant squeezing of the sponge helps your kids strengthen their hand muscles.
Play with Spray Bottles
Fill a spray bottle with water and let your kids play with it at the water table and the surroundings.
Playing with spray bottles helps develop your kids’ finger and hand strength, and the constant pressing and releasing, similar to cutting with scissors, improves fine motor skills and finger dexterity. 💦
Make an Ice Sensory Bin
Transform your water table into a sensory bin filled with ice.
Fill the water table with a small amount of water, just enough to cover the surface and to make the ice cubes float.
Make ice cubes from different sizes of containers, and you can also add small toys inside. Transfer them onto the water table for some fun ice play. 🧊
Set Up a Kitchen
Create a kitchen set-up with utensils, pans, pots, and spoons for your kids to pretend-play cooking. Add play fruits and vegetables for them to cook within the water setting. 🍽️
Pretend play is great for kids to develop their imagination as they play out real-life scenarios.
Wash Fruits and Vegetables
My son enjoys washing his play fruits and vegetables the same way I do with the actual ones.
Get your kids to clean the fruits and vegetables before they play pretend to cook. Add the play fruits and vegetables to the water table with a few drops of dish soap, and kids can wash and dry the play produce. 🍉🥕
Create a Bubble Foam Experience
Enhance the experience of playing with the water table with the addition of bubble foam which also doubles as a sensory activity.
Combine body wash or bubble bath solution that is tear-free along with food coloring and water in a hand blender to create an airy and frothy bubble foam. Make them in different colors and transfer them to the water table for kids to engage with the mesmerizing foam.
Build Ice Boats
A simple and fun activity where kids play with the boats they made.
Mix a few drops of food coloring in water, and pour it into containers to make ice boats. Insert straws or ice cream sticks when the water is partly frozen to make the sails, ensuring it balances the size of the ice boats.
Fill the water table, and bring out the ice blocks for kids to get their boats sailing! ⛵️
Scoop and Pour Water Beads
Set up a scoop and pour station by including water beads, plastic scoops, and a large bowl on the water table.
Encourage your kids to scoop the water beads from the table and pour them into the bowl for a fun activity. 🧮
Scooping and pouring water helps kids improve their concentration and hand-eye coordination and develop gross motor skills.
Create a Magic Potion
My son enjoys brewing magic potions and pretending to be a wizard!
Encourage your kids to brew their versions of the magic potion in their water table cauldrons with a wooden spoon to stir. Kids can add flowers, loose petals, leaves, and water beads to make unique potions.
Create a frothy foam effect with a few drops of tear-free body wash in the water.
Pro Tip:
You can make your kids come up with fun names for the magic potions accompanied by a little story describing the potion and its magical qualities for a pretend play activity.
Play with Pom Poms
Set up the water table by urging your kids to add handfuls of pom poms in the water with slotted spoons.
Once your kids finish adding the pom poms, you can encourage them to explore the set-up, scoop and pour pom poms and play around with them. 🧶
This fun activity helps kids develop fine motor skills along with understanding the concept of cause and effect.
Sensory Play with Water Beads
Water beads are colorful beads that kids love playing with and a great sensory medium that stimulates your kids’ senses and encourages the exploration of textures. 🧮
Add water beads to cover the surface of the water table. You can let kids play with the beads, running their fingers over the texture and engaging with their senses.
Play with Rubber Ducks
A simple and engaging activity that kids will love spending their time with.
Add a few rubber ducks to the water table and let your kids play with them as you would in a bathtub. You can add some tear fear bubble solution to create foam to make the play more fun. 🐤
Squeeze Dry Pom Poms
After your kids have finished playing with the pom pom on the water table, make them take the pom poms out.
Let your kids squeeze the pom poms well to release all the water, and leave it on a drying rack to dry.
The constant squeezing of pom poms will help kids improve their finger and muscle strength and inculcates the habit of cleaning after playing.
Transfer Water with Mugs
A fun water-transferring activity that my kids love doing.
Get your kids to scoop and transfer water from a bucket, and fill the water table with water using a mug.
Doing this helps your kids develop their balance and improves the strength of their fingers and hand muscles. 🍶
Learn to Spell Words
Kids can improve their spelling abilities in a fun and engaging way using foam letters and the water table.
You can make your kids spell different words by placing the foam letters on the water. You can start by teaching them to spell their name and move to two-letter and three-letter words. 🔠
Pro Tip:
You can make reference cards for the words you want your kids to spell with the foam letters to serve as a guide they can follow.
Explore Color-Mixing
Set out cups of water, each mixed with a few drops of food coloring to make colored water. Kids can pour and mix all the cups of colored water into the water table area as they wish. 🎨
Through this, they discover the concept of color mixing, which involves combining two or more colors to make another color, and will be able to remember the names of the colors.
Pro Tip:
You can teach them the basics of color mixing by letting them mix two colors in small quantities in a bowl to make the new color.
Sort Colors with Plastic Balls
Add different colors of large plastic balls to the water table. Kids can sort the balls with the same colors separately using a net and transfer them into bowls or buckets according to the colors. 🏐
This activity is beneficial for kids to learn to identify colors and their names.
Transfer Water with Funnels
Get your kids to use a funnel to transfer water from the bucket to the water table. Using a funnel helps kids learn precision while pouring into the opening and keeping their hands steady to not spill the water. 🚰
Pro Tip:
You can make it a bit difficult by using a funnel with a smaller opening and letting your kids transfer the water into a bottle through the funnel.
Conclusion
The games and activities my kids and I played with the water table have been a source of learning, fun, and joy for us! ❤️
I hope you enjoyed the activities I mentioned in this blog post. Please comment below on which activities you would try at home with your kids!
I’m a former teacher (and mother of Two Childs) with a background in child development. Here to help you with play-based learning activities for kids. ( Check my Next startup Cledemy.Com)