Wild, wet and lots of fun!
Lee’s Summit mom Laura Megan has discovered a homemade slip-and-slide is an excellent way to entertain kids in the backyard on hot summer days. Rebecca Shipley, another Lee’s Summit mom, has found her son simply loves helping wash the car.
When the temperatures rise, having creative ways such as these to stay cool while playing in the yard is essential. From slip-and-slides and car washes to water balloons and water guns, you need only a few supplies to get wet and make memories.
Megan has created the slip-and-slide in her backyard on several occasions using a heavy blue tarp or a plastic sheet and baby oil. She weighs it down with cinder blocks, runs the sprinkler, grabs some inner tubes, and the kids are prepared for some slippery sliding.
“It was something different, something bigger than your typical store-bought slip-and-slide,” Megan says. “You could make it to where you have races.”
Such races are possible as this type of slip-and-slide is wide enough to allow more than one person to slide at a time. Laura notes adding the oil is important because many tarps can have a texture to them. When it’s all set up, the slide can be fun for kids of all ages.
Shipley says her 3-year-old son always wanted to help her husband wash his car, so eventually they gave him his own sponge. He started scrubbing the car, cooling himself down with water in the process. He took the idea a bit farther and has begun to bring out other toys to wash as well. Shipley says he even has begun helping water the plants—and all these activities are an opportunity for them to be outside together as a family while getting a little wet.
If the kids want to make some money and take the car wash concept a little farther, they can establish their own car wash to service the neighborhood. The kids will make some money, have fun and get wet in the process.
No discussion of water-related summer fun is complete without a mention of the classic water balloon. Backyard water balloon wars are always a hit (quite literally), no matter how you play them. Although crazy and chaotic throwing of balloons is serious fun, you can organize the fun a bit more and play a game of water balloon baseball.
If you are up for a very messy activity, consider putting some food coloring in the water balloons. Everyone can wear white clothes and see how colorful their t-shirts become during the water balloon war. The resulting outfit provides a unique memento of the game. If you want color but more contained mess, consider freezing ice cubes dyed with food coloring and painting an old t-shirt with them.
Once you’ve added a bit of color to your fun, you may be ready to move on to water guns. Randomly soaking friends and siblings is a staple of summer fun, but also consider using the water guns for a full-scale organized backyard game. Set up targets to shoot at and barriers to hide behind. The one who remains driest wins.
Running through the sprinkler is a classic way to get wet, and you can make a sprinkler a number of ways if you don’t already have one. One way is to poke holes in a pool noodle and attach a hose to the end. Drilling holes in PVC pipes and hooking up a hose is another way to fashion a homemade sprinkler.
For younger kids, a water table in the backyard can provide hours of entertainment. Include some ocean-themed toys and toddlers pretend they are at the beach. Painting the deck with water is another simple activity that can keep a young child entertained for a long period of time.
An inflatable water slide is a crowd-pleaser sure to draw the attention of all the neighborhood kids. Although the cost involved in buying a water inflatable is large, consider making it a group effort. If a batch of neighborhood families goes together to purchase the slide and considers it a community toy, everyone gets in on the fun.
If you have exhausted all the more creative ideas or just need the most basic water fun, remember that any slide can be made into a water slide as long as you have a hose. Most of the time, all kids want is to just get wet and exert some energy.
Allison Gibeson is a Lee’s Summit mom and writer who is looking forward to some water balloon fights this summer.