The kids (and you!) will be cool in no time.
By Juliana LaBianca, Reader's Digest
Create a DIY slip ‘n’ slide
While swimming pools and sprinklers are great, every kid knows that slip ‘n’ slides are where it’s at. Go low budget and use a plastic tarp, a garden hose or sprinkler, and greasy dish soap to make your slide, or use this digitalmisery.com method that utilizes pool noodles to keep the hose in place.
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Water balloon baseball
Play baseball exactly as you would normally, but replace your softball with a water balloon and your wooden bat with a plastic whiffle ball bat. Set up hula hoops at each base and get pitching.
Get inside a human-sized bubble
What’s better than a regular bubble? A bubble you can stand inside. Fill a small plastic pool with water and bubble solution and let it sit overnight. Place a hula hoop at the bottom of the pool and instruct kids to stand inside it one at a time. Pull the hoop up to their heads and watch in amazement as it brings a giant tubular bubble along with it. Don’t forget to take pics!
Play limbo or hop-the-hose
Play the simplest game ever by turning up the water pressure on your hose and using the line of water to create either a limbo stick or a hurdle. Continue to lower or raise the hose to increase the difficulty.
Set up a sponge race
[post_ads]Find two buckets and fill one to the brim with water. Leave the other bucket empty and set the buckets across the yard from each other. Give your child a sponge and challenge him or her to wet the sponge in the water bucket, run to the opposite end of the yard, squeeze the water into the empty bucket, and repeat, until the second bucket is full. You’ll keep time and see how many times they can beat their record. For multiple kids, turn it into a race—whoever fills their bucket first, wins.
Lay out an obstacle course
For an all-out backyard water bonanza, set up an obstacle course by combining all of these ideas into one. Have kids slip ‘n’ slide, hit a water balloon with a whiffle ball bat, toss a balloon into a bucket, and fill a bucket with a sponge, all in a row. It can be a race against the clock, a relay race, or a low-pressure good time.
