Fun Toddler Projects: Week 3 Water/Outdoor Play

This week we tried to get outside to play every day, in the mornings preferably when it isn't scorching hot. One day we tried in the afternoon and I grew so hot I started to get dizzy, yet Connor just played and played. Yikes!

Here are the "projects" we did:

Car wash: I filled big bowls with water and a bit of soap, gave Connor some sponges and let him wash his push cars. He thought that was pretty funny, but he was way more into rinsing everything off with the hose!

 Later, we added some food coloring to bowls of water and let Connor play with different cups, spoons, etc. in the water. His favorites were the whisk (?) and a paint brush. He really loved dipping the paintbrush in water and "painting" the concrete floor, walls, anything that darkened when wet, my legs included. :)

I know it's bad to waste water, but I let Connor play with the hose for a few minutes. He just loves it! :)

We empty the water table and other containers and Connors fills them up again. He really enjoys dunking his face in the water too. Here he is practicing blowing bubbles:

We made our own bubble solution and blew bubbles outside. It was such a windy day that as soon as Connor dunked his wand into the solution and lifted it up, the wind blew bubbles for him! He got a real kick out of that but I couldn't get any pictures fast enough.

Here is a project that had to wait until the end of the week to try because we had to drink up all the milk. Wash an empty milk jug and use nails to make holes on the bottom. Fill it up and let your toddler water the grass, plants, and flowers outside with his own "sprinkler". :) Sounds fun and easy and cheap right? Well, it is...although punching holes into the bottom of an empty milk carton is a little time consuming. Unfortunately, Connor wasn't at all impressed. I showed him how to hold the carton and how the water sprinkled out. "Go water the flowers" I told him. He ran out to the grass, held it for a moment, sat it down in the dirt, then ran it back over to me and dismissed it entirely. :) You win some, you lose some! :)

After a few days, I just continued to let him go at it with the hose. He obviously LOVES it; one day all he wanted to do was stick his thumb in the hose to make the water shoot out in all directions. He was positively giddy over squirting me as well. :)

And this my friends is the boy who cries when we have to wash and rinse his hair. Yet outside he willingly stuck his whole head and face into the water. *Eye roll*

Connor's Busy Book has a lot more outdoor and water play ideas, so I'm planning to just continue trying a few new things every week. Tomorrow I'll post on how the busy boxes and busy bags have worked out. :)