Oh, how we’ve waited for this day! We’ve been talking for weeks about how one of these days the weather will warm up enough that we’ll be pulling out the sprinkler again, and today, my friends, was that day!
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves:
My-oh-my, we do love Summer-time!
The Hooligans were busy making a big batch of garden soup today!
This is one of our favourite Spring-time activities, and it’s as easy as setting out some bowls, spoons, ladles, a jug or two of coloured water and some scissors so the kids can go around the garden collecting their ingredients.
They’ll be kept busy chopping, scooping, pouring, mixing and cooking up a storm! And clean up is a breeze… It all gets dumped back into the garden when they’re finished!
Bon Appetit!
Oh, we’re loving our wet and messy play now that the summer weather has arrived. Did you pop by yesterday? Did you see the baby bath station that we had set up in the backyard? We set it up again today because it was such a hit, and because a couple of the Hooligans don’t attend on Thursdays and they missed out on the fun.
But today, I added another awesome, wet, messy, sensory activity today that kept them busy all morning again! Behold the mud-pit/car wash!
I turned our wagon into a mud pit by mixing up some potting soil, several scoops of sandbox sand, and a bucketful of water. (you can see how we’ve used a wheel-barrow to make an even larger, mobile mud-pit)
Then several feet below and away from the wagon, I placed a large basin filled with soapy water, and I ran our hot-wheels tracks from one to the other.
I set some cars up at the mud-pit and called the gang over. You can probably guess how popular this activity was. They LOVED it!
The basin of water didn’t stay clean for long, but that made things even more fun; they had to search around in the black water to find their cars,
and the cars didn’t exactly zoom down the track with all that mud either, but the Hooligans didn’t even seem to notice. They were happy to push them along until they reached their destination.
Now, be prepared: your little one COULD get very dirty. I’m not saying he or she will. In fact, a couple of the Hooligans stayed quite clean. Even Miss Mess wasn’t too bad, although I did give her clothes a soapy rinse before sending them home.
This little guy however…
Look at him! Think he had fun? Oh yeah! And it was so cute: I set out a big bowl of water for them to wash up in when they were finished, and he did – he washed his hands until they sparkled and then came running over to me, proudly shouting “I’m clean, I’m clean!”, and looking like this:
Yup sure, little guy. Whatever you say!
I feel I need to share this next photo for those of you who might be horrified by the state of his clothing. I tossed them onto the grass (the clothes, not the kids), sprinkled them with some dish soap, and gave them a blast with the garden hose. In less than a minute, they looked like this. 
See…. don’t let a little dirt scare ya! Let them get messy! They’ll love you for it! And of course, if you’re looking for a cleaner-but-still-messy alternative to this activity you can always do this version of a car-wash.
I have another super-easy activity to share today that your little ones will love! This kept the Hooligans busy for the better part of the morning yesterday!
I picked up a couple of plastic dolls at a thrift shop a couple of months ago with this activity in mind.
This is a snap to set up. I used our dollar store kitty-litter basin for the baby-bath, and set up a tray with everything the Hooligans would need to bathe their babies: sponges, a few baby wash cloths and hand towels, a couple of toothbrushes, various spray bottles, a soap pump (filled with soapy water) and a couple of travel shampoo containers filled with watered down shampoo and contitioner. I also added a stainless-steel “bar of soap” (it’s actually for removeing garlic odours from your hands when cooking).
I filled the basin with warm, soapy water and sprinkled it with a few drops of food colouring just to make it a little more interesting.
What fun!
Squeezing the bottles and sprayers and sponges is a great way to develop motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination. It took a lot of strength to squeeze the shampoo out, and to get the conditioner (they decided all on their own that it was toothpaste) onto the toothbrushes, and to get those sprayers spraying in the right direction. 
It was challenging to hold the baby WHILE aiming/pumping the spray bottle so this little one enlisted some help from a friend.
And our youngest Hooligan was fascinated by the dripping water.
It was sweet to see them caring for their babies like they were real little mommies and daddies.
Washing:
Scrubbing:
Shampooing:
Rinsing:
Drying:
All of this led to assorted other water play as well:
A big bowl of soapy water on the ground for splashing in,
and I made a bubble patch in the grass for the kids to squish their feet in.
What a simple idea for play on a hot, summer day! We’re going to be doing it all over again today. 
It’s been absolutely gorgeous here this week! Hot and summer-like and it’s only March! We’ve been spending our days outside, and these temps were the perfect for getting messy and playing with water.
Yesterday we set up a “car-wash”.
I covered the lid of a storage container with shaving cream. This served as the actual car-wash.
Next to that, I turned over a laundry basket, and set a glass dish on top. I had a couple of non-slip rubber pads that I put underneath the dish to keep it from sliding around. I filled the dish with warm water and added a couple of drops of blue food colouring. This was the rinse-station.
Then a stool with a tea-towel draped over the top served as a place to dry the cars.
The Hooligans played together at the car-wash for an hour: washing, rinsing, drying, and starting all over again. This little guy was at it for an hour and a half! 
I think that’s a sure sign that it was a hit!
Want some more great shaving cream activities? Check out our marbled hearts and shaving cream and food colouring posts!
I don’t know how many warm days we have left, so I figured I’d best squeeze another water activity while the sun shines. 
This is such a simple activity to pull together, and FUN? Ok, the Hooligans were at it for about an hour straight, until a couple of them ventured off to play in the yard. I left the activity set up for another hour though, and there was always someone (or more than one) at the table.
Here’s what we did:
I gathered up a variety of empty containers (body wash & shampoo bottles, a dish detergent bottle, an energy drink bottle etc.), and we filled them with warm water (they feel soooo nice when they’re filled with warm water). We added food colouring to each bottle, and also added glitter to some, and a drop or two of dish soap to some.
Then we headed outside with some glass (Pyrex) baking dishes, a few glass jars and some wooden spoons. I chose the glassware for a couple of reasons: A) I wanted to use containers that were clear so the Hooligans could really see the colours they were working with, and B) I thought plastic containers would be too light and might be easily tipped over if knocked into or leaned on.
Set out the bottles of coloured water, and let the fun begin!
This proved to be much more than just water play, or a lesson in colour mixing. Because all of the bottles were different, the lids all opened in different ways: some were pop tops, some were flip tops, some were easy to open, and others were challenging for little fingers.
Some bottles poured quickly, and some required squeezing. One bottle was particularly hard to squeeze (a Heinz ketchup bottle). The older children really had to work to get the water out of it, and the younger ones required my help. 
And getting their aim right was tricky for the younger ones when filling the smaller jars. It was neat watching them figure it all out.
It took a bit of time for them to drain all the bottles, but when they did, I had a couple of pitchers of warm water standing by, for re-fills. It was just a matter of adding a couple more drops of food colouring. Also, if someone’s glass dish was full, and the colour wasn’t too muddied, I just poured that into a bottle that had been emptied. 
I have to say, this was hands down, one of the best EASY activities that we’ve ever done here.
There you go! Gather up your empty containers, and get playing!! 
We are in the midst of a Fall Heat-Wave here. It’s incredible! It’s hot! It’s sticky! And I’m loving it! It was 27 degrees here this afternoon!!! TWENTY-SEVEN DEGREES on the 26th of September! Unreal! What’s also kinda strange is that our leaves are just starting turn. Some years, we start seeing tinges of orange in late August, but this year, here we are, almost to October, and we’re just starting to see bits of colour here and there.
I’m not sure what it’s all about, but I’m not complaining. I am so not ready to bid farewell to our warm, sunny days. The longer winter stays at bay, the better, in my opinion. 
Someone was complaining today though! This morning, while playing in the yard, Miss Mess asked if we could go INSIDE, because it was “too hot” to play outside!
Fortunately, on the weekend, I ran across this post at Mommy Savers, suggesting coloured ice cubes for bath-time fun. I didn’t realize today would be as hot as it was, and I didn’t have bath-fun in mind. I just thought the brilliantly candied-coloured cubes looked awesome, and figured the Hooligans would have fun playing with them in a big bowl of water. So I put Andrew to work, and had him whip up a couple of batches of them.
It was a fun little exercise in colour mixing for him. He’s done colour mixing dozens of times, but it never gets old.
I’m so glad I had these in the freezer this morning, because as soon as my little friend complained about the heat this morning, ta-daaa… Instant chill! And FUN? Oh my goodness! They LOVED it! We dumped the cubes into a big glass bowl of water, and added tongs, slotted spoons, and small containers. Our first tray of cubes melted fairly quickly, because the water wasn’t terribly cold. We dumped the second tray in, along with a tray of normal ice cubes. These cubes lasted much longer, because the water temp had dropped significantly after the addition of 3 trays of ice.
This probably occupied the Hooligans for about 40 minutes. When the cubes were gone, they were happy to play in the water with the containers and ice-trays.
What a cool and refreshing activity for a warm day! We will definitely do this again. It takes no time to mix up a couple of trays of these, and have them in the freezer for an easy but super-fun activity. I think they’d be awesome in the tub too! I wish I’d thought of this when my own boys were younger!
My water-beads arrived in the mail yesterday! I ordered them online from rainbowwaterbeads.com. They were really reasonable: I got 5 colours for 8 dollars. Shipping was free from the U.S. to Canada on orders under $20, and they were at my door in under a week.
I soaked a couple of the colours yesterday, and my boys tried them out last night and LOVED them. Matthew (13), said “These are the best things in the whole house! If I was in the daycare, I’d play with them all day”. I have to agree. They are SOOOOO cool.
Today, the Hooligans got to play with them. We dumped the 2 colours in a plastic tote and took them outside to play. They were a huge hit. 
A big thank-you to all the creative Momma’s out there for sharing their water-bead fun on their blogs! I never would have known about these little gems otherwise!!
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