Water Words

With the heat wave we had in late Spring, I decided to create a refreshing outdoor language activity for the Kindergartners and First Graders. This is a fast and easy project you can do on the fly, which is how most of my projects materialize.

We already had a wading pool, so I filled it up about half way, maybe a little more.

I sliced shapes from foam swimming noodles that I picked up at the dollar store (why would anyone pay more for these??!) to get the smaller shapes. To slice them I used a serrated knife (also purchased at the dollar store because none of my knives are sharp). I would say the sliced pieces were about 1 1/2" thick, give or take an inch since I just eyeballed them.

I used Sharpie pens to write words and letters on each side of the shapes, keeping the reading level limited to 1-4 letter sight words. Then I dumped them into the pool.

The kids enjoyed the sensory experience of the shapes floating and bumping into each other, splashing and playing word games.

Here are a few of the games we played-

Each child selected one shape, read the word, then used it in a sentence. Every so often I'd swirl the mix up so the words would rotate around, making sure each child didn't just keep reading the same word over and over.

Then we pulled out a few shapes and made up silly stories, like, "The fast lunch ran home".

Finally, the kids were having so much fun with this activity we squeezed in one more game before they had to go home. We tried to find rhyming words and word families, almost like a match game.

Easy as pudding!