FAMILY CORNER
The wonders of water
From water conservation and cleanliness to how it helps us function, we share ideas for building environmental learning with water play fun
Share this guidance with your families
Young children love water. Whether it’s splashing around in the bathtub, showering friends with water pistols or building sandcastles on the beach, there’s something incredibly joyful about getting soaking wet as part of their play.
Childhood is an ideal time to harness that love of the wet stuff and have some fun, while at the same time learning about the importance of water to the world, water conservation, and how this precious resource helps to sustain us and keep us healthy.
Making things grow
Spending time outdoors creates a great opportunity to talk about planting seeds, growing flowers, or easy fruit and vegetables such as strawberries and tomatoes, and the role that water and rain play in this process. Not only do children love watching their plants grow and watering them day-today, but they build up responsibility and a recognition of cause and effect.
At home, you can measure out the water together to ensure it’s not wasted by overwatering – a great way to build number recognition and the concepts of ‘more’ and ‘less’.
Calming and soothing
You can set up a number of safe water play areas at home – including a water table where youngsters can play with sponges, funnels and containers, and a washing station where little ones clean toys or play at doing laundry. You can add accessories and additives such as gentle laundry and dishwashing fluids that make fun bubbles and soften the way while the children play.
You can also use different types of glass bottles and jars part-filled with water for your little ones to use as musical instruments, striking them with spoons or sticks.
Keeping healthy
Most obviously, of course, young children need to learn about the importance of water in keeping them alive and their bodies working properly. Discussing what water does for the body when your child gets thirsty and has a drink can help them to understand how it helps them function. You can also build in water safety by talking about the colours for hot and cold taps!
A mini investigation that can be conducted at home could be around what water is for drinking and how we know – e.g. what’s different about the water we swim in at the swimming pool? Why do you think it’s different?
Some of the science involving water is still quite difficult for toddlers and pre-school children but engaging them in activities and starting to talk about water is a good start for what they will learn later – plus, it gets them interested early on!
With water scarcity a growing concern, children should be discovering all they can about the impact of global problems such as climate change and flooding, droughts and famine, and water conservation and shortages. Some of these challenges will be contradictory to them. Build in discussions that, for example, explain that while people in some countries might have flooded fields that ruin their crops, farmers in other parts of the world will have too little rain for their food to grow.
Starting those conversations at home, in an age-appropriate way, can help to nurture responsible and environmentally-aware citizens of the future.
Under 5 magazine
The magazine of the Early Years Alliance