10 Ways to Make it Fun!

Enhanced – Access: the website links

with Trish Corlew

Most of us who homeschool lean a bit more into laid-back, life-based learning during these hot months. What better way to make it fun than to incorporate water activities into your routine? Whether you are going on a beach adventure or aiming to create special memories at home, here are some wonderful water activities to cool you off, spark imaginative learning, and have a blast!

1. Water Balloon Extravaganza

Water balloons are always fun, affordable, and a great way to beat the heat! Whether you decide to have a water balloon extravaganza just with your family or to invite some friends, it doesn’t have to be complicated to be amazing. There are also plenty of simple ways to give your extravaganza an educational twist. Toddlers and young children can sort water balloons by color, or you can use a Sharpie to write numbers or shapes on the balloons and have them find matches. Older children can practice math by writing numbers on the balloons and making equations for the balloons that burst!

2. Beach-Based Learning

Whether you are planning a beach vacation, have already been on one, or are dreaming of one, you can bring some of the fun to your home with crafts, learning about sea creatures, and trying some STEM-based learning projects!

One craft that my family and I have loved for years is called beach in a jar. We collect sand, shells, and even water from different beaches we have visited to create a “mini beach.” But you can do this without going to the beach at all (a trip to Hobby Lobby would do it!)

Creating your own micro-beach is also a great way to introduce learning about coastal ecosystems. Discover the amazing creatures that live in the water like sea turtles, dolphins and sharks! And if you’re planning to get out there in the waves, try some cool STEM projects at the beach like creating an underwater viewer or making a solar still that can remove salt from the sea water!

3. Watercolor Painting

Watercolor is such a beautiful and fun art medium, and it’s also very different from acrylic. Watercolor painting doesn’t always behave or follow the rules because the water’s movement often impacts just how a painting turns out. Enjoy playing around with some different watercolor techniques, like wet-on-wet, wax resist, or using salt to create a cool texture on the page!

4. Water Science Lab

There are so many amazing and simple chemistry experiments you can do with water as the main player! Learn about the different states of water with a cool, instant ice experiment or by playing around with evaporation. Explore mixtures and solutions through a fireworks-producing oil and water experiment. And find out how plants drink water with a cool, capillary action experiment such as the walking rainbow.

5. Rain Study

Sudden rain storms are a summer staple, so embrace the rain! When was the last time you and your kids went out in the rain in your rain boots or swimsuits? This makes memories that will stay with them forever! For some rain-themed science, try creating your own rain cloud with shaving cream and food coloring. Do a water cycle experiment by creating a mini water cycle in a bag. Watch as the water evaporates, condenses, and precipitates, demonstrating the water cycle in real-time.

6. DIY Water Park

You know what your children are guaranteed to love this summer? The chance to create a waterpark in the backyard! A trip to the dollar store and some creativity is all it takes. You can even incorporate the extra challenge of a budget to bring in some math and critical thinking skills! It’s the ultimate engineering challenge.

Let your kids take the lead on this endeavor! Have them make a plan for setting everything up: inflatable pool, slip and slide… whatever they come up with. They will always remember the time you let them imagine and create their own DIY Water Park. (Don’t forget to take pictures!)

seven kids sitting on a towel at a beach

7. Boat Building

If you want to have some water fun that involves engineering on a slightly smaller scale, build a small boat—one made of household items that can float in the water and maybe even race, depending on how elaborate you want to get!

Challenge your kids to build boats using materials like corks, sticks, coffee filters, straws and paper. Once the boats are built, head to a nearby stream, pond, swimming pool, or even a large tub of water to race them. This is a creative, STEM-based activity that all ages will love. It also incorporates thinking about principles of buoyancy and basic engineering on an intuitive level!

8. Ice Creation and Exploration

This one is mostly for the toddlers, but older kids can enjoy the experience too! Place small toys or objects in balloons or zip-lock bags full of water, freeze them, and then peel off the balloon or bag. Let children “excavate” the toys from ice using safe tools and salt. To keep playing with ice, you could also craft fun ice cubes with berries and herbs inside and use them in some lemonade! Ice activities are perfect for hot days, and ice excavation can help develop fine motor skills while introducing basic scientific concepts.

9. Pond Dipping and Exploration

Go check out some of the fascinating ecosystems that exist around your local lakes, rivers, ponds or streams. Take a nature walk around the water source, bringing a nature journal and maybe some test tubes to take water samples. (Don’t forget your mosquito repellent!) Let children observe different aquatic creatures, draw pictures of plant and animal life, and look up anything they don’t recognize. This hands-on activity is a great way to learn about local ecosystems and biodiversity around water sources.

10. Swimming Strong

Swimming is a fantastic way to have fun, stay cool, and expend lots of energy! It’s also a critical life skill. If you want your children to be strong swimmers, summer is simply the best time to prioritize that mission! And even if your children are able to swim, there are so many different strokes to learn and ways to improve. What could be a more wonderful water activity than swimming? It seems obvious, but this list simply wouldn’t be complete without it!

Water activities are always fun, especially in the summer! Hopefully these ideas will help you find some inspiration for new ways to play with, and learn from, water in its various forms. From sensory play for little ones, to strategic STEM challenges for older kids, there are so many imaginative ways for kids to explore the wonderful world of water!

rish Corlew loves to teach and mentor homeschool moms in how to adopt the hands-on, fun, and active learning style she fell in love with when she was involved with her kids’ Montessori school before homeschooling. As the owner of Hip Homeschool Moms, Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, Only Passionate Curiosity, and Love These Recipes—Trish has been equipping homeschool moms to spark their children’s interests in order to become life-long learners. One of her favorite ways to do this is through travel! With her popular community, Homeschool Travel Adventures, she has taken homeschooling families on incredible educational adventures for nine years.

She’s married to David, her best friend and husband of 26 years, and they have three adult sons. Originally from the coast of North Carolina, she now lives in rural West Tennessee on a forty-acre farm. In her spare time—her very spare time—Trish loves to travel, write, and work in the garden. You’ll often find her trying to learn something new, modeling that learning is indeed a life-long endeavor!

Back to Issue