It's easy to host a preschool summer party. Invite your favorite preschool aged guest over for a backyard water party full of fun outdoor water activities. Tell parents to dress kids in swimsuits or other appropriate water play clothes and send a towel!
Watch kids stay busy with water activity play that promotes the development of fine motor skills, gross motor skills, cognitive skills and social play skills. Choose a few or all of the activities below to create a mini water play land in your back yard. A preschool summer party can be fun and educational with simple outdoor water activities kids will love.
Group Squirt Art
The white sheet serves as a canvas for preschoolers to create a large scale group art project.
Preparation:
- Hang a white sheet from a swing frame (remove the swings)
- Fill three trigger squirt bottles full with two-thirds non-toxic paint and one-third water. Fill each bottle with a different color of paint. The primary colors of red, yellow and blue work well for this activity though you can use any colors you happen to have on hand.
Activity:
Kids pull the trigger on the squirt bottles to squirt diluted paint onto the sheet. Leave the sheet up during the entire party. Children will add squirts of paint to the sheet and watch how the colors blend together.
Benefits:
Children will have the opportunity to observe the science of colors blending to form a different color. For example, red and blue make purple. Red and yellow make orange.
Shaving Cream Finger Painting or Body Painting
Safety Caution – This activity is for preschoolers over the age of three years who do not pose a risk of putting the shaving cream in their mouth.
Preparation:
- Buy a few cans of shaving cream.
- Choose a smooth surface outdoors for finger painting. Use either a vertical surface, a horizontal surface or both. For vertical surfaces, bring an easel outside or use the outside of a sliding glass door. For horizontal surfaces, a plastic child-sized tabletop works well. For finger painting or body painting, spread a shower curtain out on the lawn and anchor the corners with heavy child safe objects.
Activity:
- Children finger paint or body paint on the surfaces provided.
- Kids can "paint off" the shaving cream with water and paint brushes, pour buckets of water over the shaving cream or squirt the shaving cream off with a squirt hose.
- Afterwards, children can rinse off in the sprinkler
Benefits:
Shaving cream finger painting develops fine motor skills and wrist strength as children press against a surface and push the shaving cream around.
Clean up Tip:
To clean up shaving cream, simply rinse with water. Kids can even help with the clean up of this task by using a squirt hose to rinse off the surface.
Paint My World
Preparation:
- Fill sand pails or buckets with water.
- Place a large paintbrush in each bucket of water. This activity works best if the buckets have handles so that preschoolers can carry around the buckets.
Safety Caution - Never use five gallon buckets around young children.
Activity: Tell children to paint outside with water. Kids enjoy painting trees, houses and porch rails. Let children know if certain items are off limits for painting such as cars or delicate plants.
Benefits: Preschoolers will develop wrist strength for writing skills by using a large paint brushes on vertical and horizontal surfaces.
Squirt Hose Limbo
Preparation:
Attach a squirt gun to the end of a garden hose.
Activity:
Preschoolers try to go under the stream of water as an adult squirts the water in a line. First squirt the stream of water high. After all preschoolers involved have passed under the stream of water, lower the stream and allow children to try to go under the water stream when it is lowered.
Benefits:
Children will practice balance skills and spatial relationship skills as they make judgments about how to travel under the stream of water.
Activity Tip:
Many preschoolers will not be able to limbo using the traditional limbo position. Let preschoolers invent fun ways to pass under the stream of water or play animal limbo as kids go under the stream of water.
Add a fun sprinkler to your chosen activities above and you're ready to host a cool water party for preschoolers. For a sun safe party, remember to apply appropriate sunscreen to your preschool party guests.
