Floating Rainbow Balls in the Water Table
Baby N is all about splashing in the water, and he loves playing with the plastic balls from his ball pit. For this activity, I combined both and placed a bunch of balls and some water into the water table. N loved his Floating Rainbow Balls!
I really like using the water table for activities for babies who are already pretty proficient at standing up and tall enough to reach the items in the water table. There’s very little chance of them getting their head in the water, and they can practice standing up, holding on with one hand only or leaning against the water table while exploring at the same time.
You still want to supervise fairly closely though – and be aware that an empty water table such as ours is light enough to potentially tip over when little hands try to pull up on it. However, this was actually only an issue for us when N first started pulling up on it a few months ago, he figured out quite quickly how to do it without destabilizing the table at all.
(N was 10 months old.)
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Materials for Floating Rainbow Balls in the Water Table:
- Water table.
- Plastic balls. {We used these from our ball pit. Use whatever you have.}
- Water.
This is another one of those activities that are very quick and easy to set up and take down. I love this kind of activity!
I simply poured a little water into the lower compartment of the water table {just enough for the balls to float}, threw in three balls of each color, and stepped back to let N explore.
There was a lot of splashing, of course.
The balls are still just ever so slightly too big for him to always get a good grip on them right away, and since they were floating and wet, it was even a bit harder than usual. But he kept trying
and finally got the hang of it.
The balls did tend to drift away from him while he was trying to grab them – but that left more room to do more splashing 🙂
The balls always ended up floating back towards him every time depending on his splashing, so he didn’t have to change his position on the water table at all to keep playing.
He experimented with rolling a ball around the dry upper compartment a little
but quickly got back to splashing.
He favors his right hand but towards the end of the activity, he was splashing with both hands while leaning on the water table for support.
Do you use a water table for baby activities? Leave a comment below to tell me all about it!
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