Summer Fun

Okay, break out the sunscreen, the sprinkler, the buckets and shovels, get out those (new, clean) paintbrushes for your kids, and let them have hours of fun! It is very inexpensive to buy these items. Your dollar store or the regular retail-chains have these for a very low price. What child doesn’t love to paint! You don’t ever have to worry about paint drippings, not with water painting. In my daycare I bought many different sizes of paintbrushes. Every child got to choose which one they wanted and by the end of the week, they shared every single one. They washed, or painted, the trees, their toys, the cement, anything they could see. I would fill each bucket with enough water for them to carry it around my yard. When water-time was over, we emptied all the buckets onto the plants and the garden.

It does not take much to let kids have fun, just a few ideas from Mom and a gift of imagination and they take off! Just be very careful with supervision in any setting where children and water are concerned. Those big 5 gallon industrial buckets are not safe for small children, they can fall into it and may never get out. At one of my daycare seminars this was discussed and it is a real fact that small children have drowned in those buckets. I never had those around my children or my daycare kids. I purchased, the old fashioned shovel and buckets for sand play. Plus children can carry those around by themselves, and they feel proud to carry their own bucket to paint a tree.

Water play can be inexpensive, safe and gives your children many days of summer fun. I could never afford fancy pools, and I didn’t have the schedule to take them to community pools. I bought those smaller plastic pools and emptied it, each time, when we were through. Never, ever, leave a pool of water, any size without emptying it. You can’t take that chance for a child’s safety. My own kids and the many daycare children I cared for, shared great memories of summer fun. With just a small pool, a bucket and shovel, a sprinkler and a handful of clean paintbrushes…you don’t need a ton of money to have fun.

For more information you can also go to Homedaycare4You.com

 Article by Laurie Cesario-Overton