Water Fun Day

It's the last week of school here in Berkeley.

As you can imagine Ava is pretty excited about the upcoming Summer Vacation. What kid wouldn't love almost eleven weeks off school? But before the fun of Summer vacation there's a week of fun at school.

All this week Ava's school is holding fun events for the students. Yesterday the Kindergarten kids celebrated the impending start of Summer with a water fun day. Water balloons, water games, hoses... all sorts of watery fun.

Lots of watery fun

Here's a look at some of the fun activities the kids took part in...


The Kindergarten yard was set up with six different stations, each one manned by a different parent in charge of a particular game. I was a little late arriving so I missed seeing the first two stations that Ava's group played at. When I arrived Ava's group was playing "Drip, Drip, Splash" a water fun version of "Duck, Duck, Goose". The game was played as usual however the person who was "it" had a wet sponge in their hand. As they walked around tapping kids as either a duck or a goose they did so with the wet sponge. As you can imagine the kids ended up with pretty wet heads!

Duck, duck...

Goose!

The next station that Ava's group moved onto was Sponge Tag. Each kid held a sponge and a big bucket of water was placed in the middle of the circle that the game was played in. The kids soaked their sponges and then soaked each other as they played tag. This game was one of Ava's favourites.

Tag!

Quick, run!

Tag, again

Gotcha!

This game is great

So much fun

The next game they moved onto was a race on scooter boards. Each kid held a sponge full of water as they scooted from one end to the other. When they got to the end they squeezed their sponge out into a container. The first team to fill the container was the winner.  

Ready to start the scooter race

Ava had a little trouble propelling the wheeled board forward

Squeeze that sponge

Taking a rest

Next up, "What's the time Mr Blue Whale?". Much like "What's the time Mr Wolf?" the kids asked Mr Blue Whale for the time and stepped forward that many paces. As they got closer and closer to Mr Blue Whale they were on tender hooks, waiting for a spray from the hose. Any second now Mr Blue Whale could say "It's water time!" and spray them all with the hose. To begin with the kids sprinted away whenever it was water time but after a while they realised that hanging around and getting sprayed was actually pretty fun.

What's the time Mr Blue Whale?

It's water time!

Ready to make a run for it

Run!

After a while the kids decided that they didn't actually want to run away from the hose!

Ava's favourite game was up next. The kids took it in turns racing while holding a cup of water on their head. When they got to the end they tipped the water into a container. Sounds pretty easy right? Well the cups that they carried the water in had holes punched in the bottom which made things a little more interesting! As you can see from the photos the kids ended up pretty wet.

Running as fast as they can

Tipping out the water

Ava's turn

I missed out on seeing Ava's group play the game pictured below but it looked like a lot of fun. The kids paired up with a pillow case between them. A water balloon was placed on top and they had fun flicking the water balloon into the air trying to catch it again. Ava told me that this was another of her favourite games.

Action shot

At the end of all the activities there was just one last fun thing to do: a water balloon fight!

The kids stood very patiently in their circle while the water balloons were handed out and I was quite impressed that almost all of them waited until their teacher counted to three before they threw them. After their first go, when they just threw them at each other, things got a little more interesting when the Kindergarten teachers took it in turns standing in the centre of the circle to be the target!

Patiently waiting to find out what's next

Waiting for water balloons to be handed out

Throwing water balloons at each other

The kids throw their balloons at one of the teachers

Poor Ms Ferguson!

The remaining water balloons were then tipped into the middle of the circle and the kids had a free for all throwing and popping them on each other - or themselves! It was a joy to see the kids having so much fun together.

Water balloons are fun!

Such a fun day at school.

Today Ava's class are off to a local park for yet more games. No water this time though. Due to clashes with doctor's appointments I won't be able to make it along but I'm sure they'll be having huge amounts of fun.

Friday is the last day of school and there's yet more fun planned. After a slide show of the year's activities the kids will meet in the Kindergarten yard for a picnic. Then it's time to say goodbye to friends and Berkeley Arts Magnet for the school year and hello to Summer Vacation.