Water Games and Activities
Tag games are always a hit. Children at one end of the pool ask, "What time is it, Mr. Sharkey?" For every hour of time Mr. Sharkey calls out, a step is taken forward, until Mr. Sharkey announces it is dinnertime and tags the new Mr. Sharkey. Marco Polo combines hide-and-seek with tag as players spread out in the pool and a blindfolded Marco listens for their voices and tries to tag his replacement.
Try a slippery approach to tossing around the beach ball - after buttering hands up with suntan lotion. Or play Treasure Hunt and toss a handful of coins in the swimming pool; the player who retrieves the most coins wins. Here's a relay to test coordination: each team has a floating watermelon that it must push to a designated point and back. Each man of the team must accomplish this, but feet can never touch the bottom of the swimming pool.
Hose or Sprinkler Required
No pool, no problem! Try water balloon games: from a simple back-and-forth toss until the balloon breaks, to a water balloon relay where teams (one man and one balloon at a time) race to the finish line and bounce on their balloons until they pop (break the balloon along the way, and you start over). Anyone for volleyball? One team places five water balloons in the center of a large beach towel and hurls them over the net. The other team catches as many as they can in their towel and hurls them back.
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The playground game of Duck, Duck, Goose can be played with a tap on Duck and wringing a wet sponge on the head of Goose, for the chase to begin. Put a twist on the game of Twister. Play by the rules, only on a wet Twister board. "Go lower now . . ." will be heard from your backyard as limbo dancers bend below a limbo pole made of a stream of water from the garden hose. Get wet, and you lose - but then, getting wet is what water games are all about.
