Benefits of water play for children

Children in their early phase of life open-up slowly and learn by getting their hands on and in all kinds of things. This particular phase of their evolution sets them up for sensory play. Expert neurologist’s term this phase of development as critical, as children’s neurons get stimulated and little fingers activated. When their neurons begin to fire, their little brains get excited, setting them up for higher levels of cognition.

This is where children need to be encouraged to get into activities that spark their interest. One such activity is water play. A fun and entertaining activity, water play plays a vital role in helping children learn and acquire varied types of skills.

Water play, today, encompasses a broad array of forms from pool play to bath play, water-table play, bucket-water play, and more. Each of them brings with them their own uniqueness and benefits that foster’s children’s development, mentally as well as physically.

While encouraging children to indulge in water play, it’s also important that they never be allowed to play unsupervised, or play with low-grade water-play related toys.

Playing with water, indoors or outdoors, offers children quality opportunities to not only strengthen them physically but also mentally that advances their cognitive, emotional, and social skills.

• EXPLORE AND LEARN: Water encourages children to experiment and discover their way to wade through, and confront obstacles. Where the water source is filled with dirt, rocks, sand, etc, children are coaxed to think ways to sift their way through the water, or clear the water of its impurities. Water in outdoor cases, harbours marine inhabitants like fishes, frogs, etc, that will encourage children to wrestle their way and try new biological adventures.
• PHYSICAL GROWTH: Water helps develop a child’s hand-eye coordination and hand grip through actions like scrubbing, squirting, squeezing, etc. With better hand-eye coordination and hand-grip, children learn to hold and use other things and objects correctly. It will also help their reading and writing skills, while improving their sensory experiences, with textures from slippery to gritty, and more.
• MATHEMATICAL DEVELOPMENT: Water play gets children interested in basic maths. Children begin to experiment with mathematical concepts like measurement, volume, size, etc. This is where children also begin to learn about numbers, count, and analyse. For instance, they will learn about rocks, count how many are there, how they float and sink, and how different they are from one another.
• BALANCE: When children begin to splash in water, they learn how to balance and how to hold their strength. It will be a whole new sensory experience for them, encouraging them to work out ways to overcome obstacles without worrying about falling or crashing. Further, water helps children to build up their muscle strength in arms and legs, through water strength-training in air.
• COORDINATION: When children begin to flap their hands and legs, they begin to learn to coordinate their body and engage the core with kicking movements. This way, they learn to move through the water and coordinate their overall body movements.
• SOCIAL SKILLS: Playing in water, children get to play, explore and interact with one another. Working in coordination, children begin to discover newer experiences within shared spaces. Team spirit and bonding builds-up, encouraging children to communicate and work together better.

An incredibly fun activity, water play opens-up a whole new world of experimentations and explorations. Children get to improve their physical built, speed, and reflexes while broadening their mental growth, exploring elements of science and experimenting with mathematical concepts.

As a simple and pleasurable sub-conscious activity, water play sets the foundation to step into the real world. Premier Hyderabad-based kid’s toy brand and children toy maker, ALPAKS, offers a broad array of high-quality water-play related toy products that support sensory play within the indoor and outdoor play settings.

Every ALPAKS water play product from bath-tub to kiddie pools, water pistols, and more, for different age-groups, have successfully energised children’s innovative minds, and experiment better ways of playing, while instilling in them, the importance of environment and the need for developing healthy environmental-friendly habits.