We didn’t think we would ever feel this way in parched old Melbourne …

but we are a wee bit tired of the rain!

The children, however are loving it …

and this week when it poured down again …

they dug gutters for the water to follow …

enjoyed the mud (what a mess on the carpet!) …

and scrounged around for whatever they could find that might float in one of the big puddles.

Some children even decided to quickly whip up a boat or two at the invention table.

As they seemed to be on a bit of a roll with the whole floating and boats thing, we filled a tub of water when the rain petered out …

pulled out the materials they requested …

and off they went.

Out came the ever popular Blu Tack once more.

We saw some very clever ideas emerge!

The C.D. cases we had left over from our “hovercraft”  made perfect platforms …

and the cups we had left over from our “sound cups” made terrific ‘cabins’!

Floating boats and water play has always been an extremely popular activity with all of our children …

both inside …

and out!

We are playing a few different memory games with the children, in small and large groups.

We thought a great large group game would be the one where items are placed on a tray and covered.

One or two things are removed without the children looking (yeah, right!) and they tell us what has gone.

A pirate-themed one seemed obvious to us and amongst other things we had a mini pirate hat, like the children made with the newspaper.

Some children thought it was a sail boat so we all decided it would be great to see if we could make and float them.

We have to admit it wasn’t a great success – the boats just sogged up and sank. (Cover paper works a lot better).

It could perhaps be because we used a cut up street directory and the paper was way too thin.

Needless to say, the children gathered up other other floating objects from around the kinder …

as well as objects that didn’t float …

and had a heap of fun in the water, so all was not lost!

We chatted to the children about how the melway paper boats didn’t work and what we could use another time.

One bright spark came up with the idea of using corks to make boats, so that will become our next project.

As a follow up to the children discovering that their pyramid pointers floated, we chatted about what other things we could make which would float. Amongst various suggestions they thought we could put corks together some way, as they all knew that corks float anyway.

We put out corks, pop sticks, masking tape and card and left them to it.

Some children put two corks together with masking tape and added a mast and sail.

The benefit of the masts was that as they tended to go below the boats, it gave them a keel, which helped with the balance.

Some children struggled with the tape, so we popped out elastic bands …

… which worked well.

We started to see rafts as well when children didn’t want a sail.

One inventive child went to the boxes and found a plastic container which floated really well and made his own grand design!