image retrieved from: amazon.com
With the weather getting nicer and nicer, I love to come up with ideas that can be done outside. One of our OT’s actually thought of this idea and I loved it (and added a few twists).
There are a plethora of squirt toys out there for kids and one of the great things is that they really work on hand strengthening. You can use squirt bottles, water guns, and those little toys that suck up water and you squeeze them and water shoots out of their ‘mouth’ (sorry, no idea what they are called), to name a few. As fun as this can be you can add some twists to it by using colored water (with food coloring added in or washable paint added to the water) and the opportunities are endless!
The first idea I had was making targets and seeing how accurate kids could be by trying to hit the center of the target or even certain pictures on the target (by using white paper the colored water will show up). You can use the different squirt toys and see which can generate the longest stream by measuring how far away the kids can stand and still hit the paper. This is great work for visual attention and hand-eye coordination. You could even play around with if they are more accurate standing up, sitting down, kneeling, standing on one foot, etc.
Another idea would be to play ‘tag’ with the squirt bottles and each kiddo gets one filled with a specific color (of washable color) and they all wear white t-shirts. You can make it a small playing area or a large playing area. You can make teams of one color or have it all individual. See who can get the most hits on the t-shirt while the kids run around. This generates activity, awareness of other kids in their surrounding area, hand-eye coordination, visual attention and hand strengthening to name a few things.
You could even create an adventure with an outdoor obstacle course and have it be a scavenger hunt where they have to go through the course and squirt certain pictures as they go. For instance have a picture of a star or a circle or a leaf and they get points for each one they are able to squirt.
What are some other ideas you have used for outdoor fun with squirt toys?