Frugal Water Activities for Bored Preschoolers

Summer break is coming up and for some of us that means being at home alone with our preschool age kids all day long – and this age group needs to be kept busy or oh, the havoc they wreak!! When you are on a tight budget it can be difficult to think of activities for your preschooler. Luckily most children that age love water play and aren’t picky about what form it takes, so parents don’t need to spend money to keep the kids busy and cool.

While the inflatable products and other gadgets that make your yard into a mini water park are tempting, a great day of water play doesn’t have to be that elaborate or expensive. There are free things you can do now to be ready for a summer’s worth of water fun.

Collect small containers of various shapes and sizes for water play; they don’t need to be anything fancy to be great fun. Don’t forget to include things like empty tea tins or other safe metal containers – the water makes a great sound pouring into them!

Other items that can contribute to a preschooler’s water adventure: an inexpensive sprinkler with a rotating head, watering cans, small squirt guns that fill by drawing up water, old washcloths, balls of different sizes and materials, old paintbrushes, and old brooms.

The water source can be a shallow container of water such as a dishpan. You can set a dishpan or other low container into a wagon in order to be at a good height for standing play. Other times you might set up the sprinkler on a low flow or even just turn on the hose to a trickle. This allows kids to fill, pour and refill containers to their heart’s content. Naturally they will either end up pouring onto themselves or getting into the container altogether. Standing in a shallow tray of water and stomping as hard as you can is pretty darn fun, especially if there’s someone nearby you can get soaking wet – preferably mom, according to our preschooler.

The old paintbrushes and brooms are used to “paint” water – kids get to make temporary pictures on whatever surface shows the mark when wet. The patio, driveway or wooden fences are good candidates for this activity. Washcloths can be used similarly or just soaked and wrung out over and over. Older preschoolers might discover that wet cloths make a satisfying “splat” when tossed.

Sometimes, simpler is better. Last summer, my preschooler enjoyed playing a game that consisted of nothing more than running around the yard while I held the hose, spraying into his path at random. His objective was to “avoid” being hit by the spray, while of course getting as soaked as possible. He had a great time, because he was doing two of his favorite things – getting wet and playing with mom.

If you keep a few of these ideas in mind, when summer arrives, the kids won’t be disappointed that there’s no giant inflatable water slide in the yard – they’ll be too busy having fun to notice.