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We love summer water play on super hot, muggy days! Free playing with water allows for not only imaginative play but also encourages direction following and expressive language. We have rounded up some of the best water play activities you can do with a simple household item… a spray bottle!

Here is the link to the spray bottles we used for all six of our activities. These spray bottles were perfect for little hands to hold and squirt, but still held enough water to complete all activities without having to refill a million times. However, feel free to use whatever you have on hand at home. That’s what makes these activities so great…little to no prep and off you go!

Car Spray Wash
First up, Kate had a good old fashion car wash! In addition to the spray bottle, she used hand soap (the foaming hand soap from Bath & Body Works perfectly and easily dispensed!), a sponge, cleaning brushes, and some muddy cars. She filled a small tupperware container with water while her son carefully chose his cars. He enjoyed spraying and cleaning then cleaning and spraying some more!

This activity was great for identifying and labeling a variety of describing words. When discussing the different types of cars and trucks, her son was able to formulate sentences containing adjectives such as color, size, dirty, and clean. Kate frequently modeled sentences containing similar words. They also were able to practice the sequence of washing a car from start to finish.

Spray Bottle Painting
For this next activity, I had my girls use their spray bottles to create awesome paintings! All you need in addition to the spray bottle is water, water color dye (we like this kind), and white paper. We used paper towel as well. Beyond easy!
You could even experiment with coffee filters, cloth, or cardboard…whatever you have readily available. Once the colors were mixed, I let my daughters simply spray whichever colors they wanted and wherever they wanted. I put their names on the paper, but feel free to draw a picture or a special message.

I filled three spray bottles with red, blue, and yellow. I modeled combining the primary colors to create green, purple, and orange in cups. We enjoyed talking about primary and secondary colors as the paint bled together on the paper and mixed in the cups. This is a great water play activity to make simple predictions about colors mixing as well!

Spraying Colored Cups
Our next extremely easy, but engaging spray bottle activity is spraying colored cups! I simply filled the spray bottle with plain water. I then printed out these seasonal summer vocabulary cards and taped them to different colored cups.
While using the stream setting on the spray bottle, my daughter was able to locate vocabulary and colored cups when I gave her a descriptor. For example, she enjoyed spraying all the items we would pack in our beach bag! She even started to think of her own descriptors to have me spray the cups.

This spray bottle activity can always be adapted to target letters, sight words, and numbers. You can even practice multi-step directions such as “first spray the blue cup, then spray the cup next to the red cup.” Such an easy way to target many different language concepts while beating the summer heat!

Liking these summer vocabulary pictures? Grab a copy of these FREEBIE summer vocabulary cards in our free resource library in addition to other winter, spring, and fall vocabulary pictures! These cards are not only perfect for this spray bottle activity, but versatile for so many other activities. Just print and go…the possibilities are endless! Be sure to join our email list today to gain access to these FREEBIE summer vocabulary picture cards and other free resources only available only on our website.

Fizzy Spray Experiment
This next spray bottle activity is a bit of a science experiment as well as water play! We were able to practice sequencing along the way too. Check out the list of needed supplies for this fun, fizzy spray activity.
- Spray bottle
- White vinegar
- Watercolor dye
- Baking soda

First, I filled the spray bottle with plain white vinegar. Then I lined up the cups and helped my daughter squeeze enough watercolor dye to cover the bottom of each. Once the watercolor dyes were mixed how she wanted them, I added 3 tablespoons of baking soda over top of the dye. After that, my daughter sprayed vinegar into each cup and watched it fizz! Such a fun way to use several hand household items you probably already have!

Floating Item Spray Bin
For this next activity, grab your spray bottle and really that’s it! Find whatever waterproof objects or toys you have laying around and throw them in a small container of water. Kate rounded up some bath toys, but cars, balls, or even Legos™ would work too!

She had her son fill his bottle with water and was sure to have him switch the spray setting over to stream. After that, she gave him “clues” to figure out which ocean animal to spray first! See all of the describing clues she used in the list below!
- “Spray something that…”
- has eight legs and easily can camouflage.
- gets lost in the movie Finding Nemo.
- has sharp teeth and big fin that sticks out of the water.
- is the biggest animal in the entire ocean!
- carries its house on its back.
- waddles and swims to get around.
- can puff up super big like a ball.
- crawls on the sand and has strong pinchers.

Chalk & Spray
If your house is anything like ours, you most likely have buckets of broken chalk just hanging out waiting to be used! Since that is always the case for us, this last spray bottle activity puts that leftover chalk to good use.

First, Kate drew some shapes and words on the driveway. Her son was able to squirt uppercase and lowercase letters to practice letter identification. Next, Kate had her son spray the chalk to spread the color and fill the shapes. He even had a good time “erasing” the letters with the water!

We hope you stay cool with these easy spray bottle water play ideas. Have other summer water play ideas? Drop a comment below to tell us how you plan to have fun in the water this summer!
Happy spraying, fellow SLPs and mamas!
Talking Mama Bears