10 Ways to Play with Water and Ice {Sensory Summer}

I think my girls would live in their swimsuits all summer long if I let them. My little fishies sure do love water play so I was excited to plan a few activities to spice up our normal water play. Here are our 10 ways to play and keep cool with water and ice!

If you want to gather all of your materials before you start, we found almost everything we needed at Target, The Dollar Tree or on Amazon. Here are all the materials we used:

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Fine Motor Tools
Colored Bowls
Colored Cups
Pom Poms
Water Balloons
Play Dishes
Ice Cube Molds
Food Coloring
Alphabet Beads

Sand Castle Molds
Princess Toys
Liquid Watercolors
Paintbrushes

Jello Packets
Popsicle Sticks
Clear Cups
Sponges
Scrub Brushes
Soap
Toy Car

Switch up your water table or water filled sensory bin with these 10 play ideas. Perfect activities for summer tot school, preschool, or kindergarten!

Water Scooping and Dumping:

We started out the week by filling our Under Bed Clear Storage Bin with water. Then I added some fine motor tools, colored bowls, and colored cups for simple scooping, dumping and exploring.

Pom Pom Splash:

For some reason little Miss Aubrey is obsessed with pom poms or “fuzzballs” as Madelynn likes to call them. I thought it would be interesting to explore with them in the water. The girls liked to swim with them, squish them between their toes, squeeze out the water and sort them by color.

Water Balloons:
So my girls have never played with water balloons before because the choking factor freaks me out a little bit, but I decided to give it a try this week and keep a close eye on Miss Aubrey. I grabbed a pack of these Water Balloons from Target and goodness gracious the inventor of Bunch O’ Balloons is a genius! It was seriously amazing being able to fill 20 balloons in 5 seconds. They squirted each other a bit, but mostly had fun smashing them on the ground while I quickly picked up all the pieces so Aubrey didn’t try to eat them 😉

Water & Ice Kitchen:
Next, I used food coloring to make lots of colored water which I froze in different shaped ice cube molds. I threw all of the frozen shapes into our water filled bin with play dishes and the girls made all kinds of delicious concoctions for me to taste.

Icy Alphabet Soup:
For this activity I froze alphabet beads in ice cube trays and dumped them in our water bin. The girls scooped, mixed and watched as the letters slowly melted into their alphabet soup.

Ice Castles:
This was definitely the girls favorite activity of the week. If you have princess fans in your house they will LOVE pretending with these frozen ice castles. First I froze water in sand castle molds overnight. Then we added our small princess toys and the girls loved every minute of it!

Ice Painting:
After we were a little tired of playing with princesses, I added some liquid watercolors and paintbrushes to our bin and we painted the castles before they melted down too much.

Ice Painting:
For some more painting fun I made colored ice cubes with Jello! I didn’t want to use liquid watercoloring because I knew the girls would be tempted to taste them. I mixed 1 cup water with 1 packet of Jello, then froze them in trays with popsicle sticks for handles. Then I taped a sheet of butcher paper on the ground and let the girls paint and taste away! Lots of sticky messy fun that smelled amazing!

Color Mixing:
For our color mixing activity, I set up cups with a rainbow of colored water. This activity didn’t last long before all the water was brown, but the girls enjoyed the dumping and scooping the water even after all the pretty colors were gone.

Car Wash:
This was a close second for favorite activity of the week. We needed to clean up our sensory bin and patio from all the color play anyways so this made a perfect ending activity. I filled our bin with fresh water, sponges, scrub brushes, and soap. Then I turned out hose on low and the girls scrubbed and washed their Cozy Coupe Car until it was sparkling and new!

Do your kiddos live in the water all summer long? What are your favorite ways to keep water play interesting?

If you missed our previous themes, you can catch up here:

Sensory Summer

This summer we are spending a whole week at a time using the same sensory bin full of materials and coming up with different ways to play every day. See you next week for our last bin of the summer, water beads!