Bring the fun to your home this summer with some water play for your kids.
Creating Summer Activities for Kids
Ah, it was so much easier to come up with activities for the children when they were much younger. The little things made them so happy – little crafts, the park, sand boxes, sensory bins like rice bins, playing in rain puddles, etc. Now it takes some thought as to what these kid will enjoy.
I had this idea to make colored water with bubbles for the kids to play in on a Hot Summer’s day. I imagined they would like it but was unsure. It’s being a while since we’ve had any water play at home besides playing in a blow up pool. Even this we haven’t done since last summer. The regular pool has taken over! But sometimes it’s helpful to have “at home” activities the children can do when you’re home.
What Can be Used to Color Water?
Food coloring, dyes, paint and vegetables are some of the main methods I’ve either used purposefully or by accident to color water. Just think about it.
- Water painting anyone?
- Or when you’re using craft paint or any paint of sorts and water gets on it, what happens?
- A painter’s cup or can of water for dipping and rinsing paint brushes? Totally colors the water and turns it into a different shade.
- How about Dyes like Tie-Dyes? Now we’re taking about coloring water right? All you got to do is add water to Tie-Dye powder and whalla – you have colored water! In fact, the exact color you need will be created with Tie-Dye. But, I’m not sure if it’s a product I’ll add to bath water. I feel safer with something like food coloring.
- On a more natural scale, if you cut a beet and put it in water, the water will turn pink. Maybe pomegranate? The juice from that comes out from a pomegranate when it’s cut is real.
- How about spinach leaves when boiled in water? So many options.
But what I chose to use because one: it’s the easiest and two: makes more sense to me is food coloring.
Is it Safe to Put Food Coloring in Water?
I haven’t done research on the safety of putting food coloring in water. However, since food coloring is a pantry-safe food that’s used in cooking and baking, I imagined it would be safe to put in water for playing, lol.
When the kids were younger, I would occasionally color a tub of water with blue & green food coloring to create an ocean scene. I don’t think it affected them negatively. Seriously, it’s food coloring.
How to Create Colored Water Buckets & Bins with Food Coloring
We used:
- Food coloring
- Water
- Kid’s Bubble Bath Soap
Directions:
- Add food coloring to buckets
- Fill buckets with water
- Pour in 1 cup soap
- Stir to mix
- Add more soap, if necessary to get the bubbles. I added about a 1/2 cup more to each bucket.
Add some reusable water balloons, cups, bowls, etc, to the buckets of water. Bring out water guns, water blasters and other water activity toys.
The kids can play with the water toys.
Our children decided to get into the buckets. However, they couldn’t fit into them.
When I saw that they wanted to get in the water, I bought out storage bins to pour the water in for them to play.
They had so much fun sitting in the bins of bubbly water.
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She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
