Water Play

[e.j.]

I have a couple of water tables the kids love to play with and we also fill up squirt bottles the kids use to squirt plants, grass, playground toys, patio chairs, themselves...anything but each other. I used to have a kiddie pool and I would also let them run through the sprinkler but like someone said in an earlier post, it took longer to set up and put things away than it did for the kids to play and it damaged the grass so I stopped doing that with the kids.

[Hunni Bee]

We.do.water play at.my center. Its honestly more trouble than its worth. Most of our kids have pools at home or belong to country clubs, etc with nice pools...so sharing a small sprinkler with 45 other kids is pretty lame and there over it after about 20 minutes . We wish we didn't have to do it.

At my old center I took my ten or so kiddos to the pool weekly. There was a one foot baby pool there. It was awesome...the most trouble I ever had was getting them.to bring their suits every week...I got some second hand suits and towels and then.everything was good.

[Pestle]

I have 2- & 3-year-olds, and it's between 90 & 100 degrees for a good three months here in East TN. So we do the sprinkler almost every day. I don't want to deal with the baby pool liability. I have a baby pool--it's used as a ball pit, never with water.

[CityGarden]

Water table offered almost daily, lots of mud play, play outside in the rain, etc.

I would not do sprinkler play or pool play or any water play that required the children change into bathing suits.

[Pestle]

All my kids are potty training, so it's not much more effort for me to pull all the clothes all the way off and, an hour later, put them all the way on again--we do it halfway a zillion times a day, anyway.

[mom2many]

We had the drought and water restrictions here in Ca last year, so this was the first time in almost 30 years that we weren't able to cool off in the sprinklers.

I used the water tables and the kids absolutely loved that. I even put ice cubes in them, when it was super hot. We do have an in ground pool, but it's off limits to my daycare kids.

This year, I finally got AC...so shamefully I've been a wimp with water play and opted to have the kids play outside in the morning and stay inside, when it starts getting too hot in the afternoon.

Bottom line- I definitely used water play to help manage the heat and now it's simply not a necessity!