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Students worked hard as a team to use everyone's ideas.

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Students brainstormed a list of their favorite things to do at Lake Michigan on sticky notes and then arranged them according to commonalities.

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Students presented their ideas to the other team and looked for the most popular activities to experience at the beach.

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Students researched the importance of water play in child development.

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Image: Busy Bees at Heritage Parc
With the weather heating up, it's the perfect time to get outside and explore, and there's nothing more fun than spending time splashing and frolicking in the water on a hot day!

Playing with water not only keeps your child feeling cool and having fun, but you may be surprised to learn that water play has so many amazing benefits for childhood development, making it one of the most popular activities in early childhood education
Image: Busy Bees at Everton
What is Water Play?

As the name suggests, water play is play that involves water as well as using tools such as buckets, containers, and toys etc. that allow children to splash, scoop, pour, submerge and explore their senses.

Water play in Early Learning settings usually involves a water table or large tub that children can stand around while engaging in their play. This makes for an exciting and social experience for children as they splash, play and have fun together.
Image: Busy Bees at Kalgoorlie
5 Benefits of Water Play for Your Child's Development

In Early Learning, we acknowledge the environment as a teacher. When children engage with their environment and use natural resources in their play, they are building their sense of understanding of the world and their place in it, while also building their understanding of their own abilities to affect and influence things. Water play is both fun and educational and has a range of benefits for your child's social and emotional development, as well as developing their physical abilities and early literacy and numeracy skills. As an added bonus, children rarely get bored of it!

1. Water play develops hand-eye coordination

Water play is a fantastic activity for developing children's hand-eye coordination as they learn to pour, squeeze, stir and even paint with water. For example, through pouring water from one bucket to another, or learning how to control the direction and size of a splash, children are improving their sense of accuracy and control.

2. Water play introduces maths and scientific concepts

Water is the perfect medium for demonstrating mathematical and scientific concepts, such as volume and weight. How much water do you think could fit in this bucket? Can we measure it? What do you think will happen if we drop this heavy object into the bucket?

According to Early Childhood News, as children manipulate water play materials, they build their scientific enquiry and problem solving skills, as they begin to understand why and how things happen. For example, a child may notice that one object sinks in the water and another object floats, which prompts them to add more objects to the water to see what happens. As they continue to investigate which objects sink and float, a child will soon discover that a heavier object sinks, while lighter objects float, no matter how big or small they are.

Water play can also be used to develop children's literacy and numeracy, such as counting how many buckets of water it takes to fill a tub, or using water and a brush to write and draw.

3. Water play enhances concentration and focus

Have you ever found your child completely immersed in an experience? When children are engaged in water play, they tend to lose themselves in the activity and can spend long periods of time exploring and playing. This can encourage children to focus, and any activity that holds a child's attention for a long length of time will contribute to increasing their attention span and ability to concentrate later in life.

This is a particular benefit for formal learning. As your child prepares to begin school, being able to concentrate in a classroom will become a vital skill.

4. Water play develops motor skills and sensory exploration

Water play activities help to develop and strengthen children's gross and fine motor skills. Children enhance their gross motor skills, coordination and physical fitness through lifting, pouring, carrying, running and splashing, while actions such as squeezing help to develop the small muscles in a child's hands.

Water play also provides children with so many opportunities to explore their senses and experience different sensory experiences. Adding materials like sand, ice, soap or slime to water allows children to put their hands in different textures (gritty, squishy, slippery and slimy) as well as experience different temperatures (warm, cool, cold.)

5. Water play builds social and communication skills

Water play can be a solitary activity, but children find it particularly exciting to engage in as a group. When water play becomes a group activity, it encourages children to engage in social and cooperative play. It's not uncommon to observe Kindergarten children, for example, turn their water play into a shared experience with a common goal. For example, children may embark on a mission to fill a large tub with water from the water pump, or build a moat in the sandpit, or take turns jumping into the water to see who can make the biggest splash. In these play experiences, every child has a role to play and contributes to the ultimate goal.

Through this kind of play, children have the opportunity to see what happens when the sharing of materials and ideas takes place.
Image: Busy Bees at Burpengary East
Enjoying Water Play at Home

If your child attends a Busy Bees Early Learning Service, they are most likely experiencing water play while at care, but why not set up a fun water play station at home as well?

Setting up water play at home can be an incredibly easy and rewarding experience. There are no rules; all you need is water and some form of container, and some tools and utensils.

Some examples of materials you can incorporate in water play are:

Cups and containers of different sizes

Spades and buckets

Toys and objects that will sink or float

Funnels, bottles or eye droppers that can be used to transfer water between containers

Natural materials such as sand, flowers, leaves and pebbles

Squeeze bottles

Paint brushes

Sieves or containers with holes

Download our activity card for a fun water experience for babies and toddlers.

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The Benefits of Water Play for Childhood Development

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Image: Busy Bees at Heritage Parc With the weather heating up, it's the perfect time to get outside and explore, and there's nothing more fun than spending time splashing and frolicking in the water on a hot day!

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Students read about the dangers of water in children with Autism.

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Amusement parks, lakes, neighbors' pools - they are dangers that families of children with autism have long known anecdotally to beware of.

Jessica Lapen discovered this about 10 years ago. She was at a family gathering at her parents' home when she noticed that her son, Micah, was missing.

"He was 6 or 7," she recalled. "We knew that he would leave safe areas. We found out that he had gone down the road to a neighbor's house, and when they saw him, he was climbing the ladder to their above-ground pool."

An authoritative study earlier this year put some numbers to the fear. Drowning is the most common fatal injury among children with autism, researchers found. Children with autism age 14 and younger are 160 times as likely to die from drowning as the general pediatric population, with drowning risk peaking from age 5 to 7.

Such cases make headlines many times each summer. Now, researchers are working to understand the risks and how to counteract them - including helping parents and swim instructors teach water safety to autistic children.

"The causes of drowning for kids with autism is multifactorial," said Dr. Jeremiah Dickerson, a pediatric psychiatrist who directs the autism diagnostic clinic at the University of Vermont Medical Center. "Impulsivity is one part of it. They may not see the water as a danger, that they could fall in or that they could drown."
READ NEXT: Dimmed lights, loosened rules: Growing number of businesses cater to autistic visitors
The sensory aspects of water can also attract children with autism, though for different reasons, said Michele Alaniz, a behavioral therapist in California. "For autistic kids who seek out stimulation, they are attracted to the way it sounds, the play of light on it and the feeling of buoyancy and the way it feels on the body," she said. For kids who are driven to isolating themselves from stimulation, on the other hand, "water can be very calming, especially under the water, where there is a muffling of external sound and a kind of quiet," said Alaniz.

That can lead kids to submerge themselves in water and not realize the danger - or to not have the skills to act if they do.

"We've put these children in the pool, and where others would sort of cling to the wall and hold on, the ones with autism would just release and sink," said Alaniz.

"Even when they know they're in trouble, they may not have the communication, the language to say they need help," said Dickerson. "And with the motor discoordination some of them have, they may not be able to pull themselves out of the water."
Swimming safely
The good news is that research shows children with autism can learn to be safe around water. A study published in September in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders offers preliminary evidence that even children with severe autism can learn techniques to avoid drowning.

"It's more of a challenge to teach kids with severe autism," Alaniz said. "But, yes, they can learn to swim safely, [with] skills like breath control and how to turn over in the water."

Advocacy organizations, community centers, and schools are creating water safety classes for children with autism. Pathfinders for Autism offers a tip sheet for swim instructors who may encounter students with autism. Autism Speaks provides swim classes for children with autism and financial need with swim lesson scholarships, awarding them to 134 organizations in 31 states since 2014.

Some of those scholarships went to children at the Texas Swim Academy near Houston. Founder Kathleen McMordie, a nurse and swim instructor, explained that there are important accommodations needed for children with autism. The adjustments include getting them accustomed to being touched and to the feel of the water. Instructors may also have to teach lessons or parts of lessons in a different order than usual. These are among the reasons that swim lessons for children with autism are given individually, rather than in the usual group setting.

But the most important requirement, said McMordie, is being patient with the way children with autism receive, understand, and follow instructions. She gave the example of having children place their faces in the water, which is among the first lessons taught in swim classes.

"With neurotypical kids, you might just say, 'OK, now, face in.' But for a child with autism, it's a little different. You say, 'OK, put your face in the water.' And then you wait."

It takes more time for kids with autism to move mentally from instruction to action, McMordie explained. "You wait while they process: 'OK, she said to do this, and now I do this with my head, and then I do this.' And they put their face in.

"But if you don't wait, and you're just going, 'Put your face in, put your face in, put your face in,'" she added, "you're interrupting that process for them."
READ NEXT: Why autistic people like me need to help shape autism science
In addition to giving autistic children more time with instruction, Dickerson also recommends taking a "comic-book approach" to swim instruction for autistic children by using pictures to help the children understand what they are told.

The Texas Swim Academy uses this method. "It's just a picture of one of the instructors doing something, like putting our face in the water or kicking with a kick board," said Patty McPherson, the school's aquatics director. "We took pictures of them doing these things, then we laminated the pictures and use them to show what to do."

Jessica Lapen credits such lessons with keeping her son, Micah, now 16 years old, safe over all the intervening years since that frightening day a decade ago.

"If the neighbor hadn't found him back then, it would have ended very differently," she said. "But after that happened, we really worked with him on learning to be water safe."
This article is reproduced with permission from STAT. It was first published on Sept. 27, 2017. Find the original story here.

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Lakes and pools can be deadly for children with autism. But tailored swim lessons can save lives

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Amusement parks, lakes, neighbors' pools - they are dangers that families of children with autism have long known anecdotally to beware of. Jessica Lapen discovered this about 10 years ago. She was at a family gathering at her parents' home when she noticed that her son, Micah, was missing.

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Students began to jot down questions they had for teachers, parents, and coaches of students with autism, as well as questions they had for classmates.

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Using goggles, swim rings, and flippers teams air swam through a fun course in the hallway of school.

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Students polished up their survey questions to prepare for the panel discussions.

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Students met with their panelists, Mr. Steve Boyer, WO Swim Coach, Sarah Volker, ASD Teacher, and Jenny Or, ASD Parent.

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Students created Bug Lists based on this question: What bugs you about the current ways students with Special Needs can be in the water? Why?

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Students discussed what a student with autism might see when they are in the water, what they might hear, what they might be thinking, and what they might be feeling.

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The group met to reflect on the things they learned in their investigation stage.

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Students met the following week to recap what they have learned so far in their investigation stage, and what direction they were moving in for a solution.

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Our teams worked together in groups of four students to brainstorm as many ideas as they could in 3 minutes. Then, they had 12 minutes to develop solutions, and ended with 3 minutes to present their ideas.

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Both of our teams had the opportunity to meet other Elementary Academy teams at the Career Line Tech Center. The students presented their pitches to three high school classrooms and received great feedback to help improve their initial ideas.

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Students were given $100 of play money to divide up and place on their top ideas. Then, leaders counted up the ideas that had the most amount of money. With those ideas, the students discussed whether their most liked ideas were new, useful, and feasible.

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Students worked in teams to make connections between their top vote ideas.

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Students began building their prototypes of their Michigan Design Product with the materials they thought were best for building their products.

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Both teams wrote their own parts for the final presentation and each student took one question from the Michigan Design Challenge application and wrote a response in their own words.

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Students presented their Elevator Pitches to a classroom of fourth graders who listened carefully and filled out presentation rubrics on voice volume, eye contact, enthusiasm, clarity of words, speed of speaking, and body knowledge.

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The teams displayed their protocol work around the room to showcase their learning experiences.

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Team Super Support Suit

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Team Super Ball 3

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Students received solid feedback from their presentation that allowed them to see where they needed to grow.

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Our audience asked clarifying questions and jotted down whether our presentation could be improved. They shared encouraging words and thanked the team for their leadership.

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Both teams filled out a rubric on themselves for our presentation. We specifically reflected on our Validation stage. Our groups presented twice. Their first presentation was for the High School students at the CTC when they were sharing their initial solutions and wanting feedback on how to make it better.  Their second presentation was their final one that we taped to share with all of our parents and stakeholders.

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These are the slides we used as we moved through each stage of the Design Sequence.

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Photo Montage of Our Michigan Design Challenge Journey

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Photo Montage of Our Michigan Design Challenge Journey

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Elementary Academy - Jan 10 – Mar 2, 2023.mov