• Kids love water play.Kinderportrait image by Yvonne Bogdanski from Fotolia.com
  
  Water play is a great way to keep your kids busy and cool in hot weather, whether it's a project you create, or a commercially-available product like pool slides, flumes, splash pads, and spray grounds. Plan ahead and use water play features as a teaching tool and a good way to have fun and get a little exercise.
  
  

Create Your Own

• Let your child have fun with the water hose.wet water image by Vanessa van Rensburg from Fotolia.com
  
  Install a pond with a splash fountain for your child. She can feed and observe her own fish, and play in the fountain or waterfall you set up with several levels of stone and a small pumping system. Give your child a water hose to help water the plants in your yard or wash the family car. Turn the water on him to instigate fun play. While the hose is out, create a game of limbo with s steady stream of water your child can bend under or try to jump over. Draw chalk targets on your driveway or a tree trunk and let the kids take aim with water pistols to help improve their hand-eye coordination. Give your child a bucket of water and a paintbrush, and let her "paint" the fence, patio or swing set.
  
  

Sliding Fun

• Kids love water slides.red water slide fun image by .shock from Fotolia.com
  
  If you have a pool in your backyard, add a flume-style pool slide. Many companies sell slides in one- to four-unit sets. Some feature a roof over the platform at the top of the slide. If you don't have a pool, there are commercially-available plastic slides made of vinyl sheeting you can lay out on your lawn and run the water hose across to create hours of running and sliding play.
  
  

Ground Spray Pads and Aquatic Climbing Walls

• Children have fun for hours with a ground spray pad.water play image by dah0404 from Fotolia.com
  
  Create a water park in your own backyard by purchasing a splash pad at a fraction of what it would cost to install a pool. Kids love the splash pads at amusement and community parks where the water squirts up from the ground at intermittent and unpredictable intervals. Manufactured for residential use, these splash pads are fun areas for your child to play tag with his friends. With only one inch of standing water, splash pads are a safe way to entertain your child for hours.
  
  If you already have a pool in your yard, install a 3-meter-high aquatic climbing wall on the side of the pool that sits at an angle of the pool's surface, so the kids will fall back into the water. The wall must be installed at the deep end of the pool, and children must be swimmers to use the wall. This is a great physical activity to improve upper body strength.