Veronika has been loving her water table this summer, and today we found yet another way to play with it: we went “fishing”!

My kids are often frustrated by attempts at magnetic fishing, so today we used a much easier hack: mini fish nets from the pet store. I filled the water table with water and added easy little “fish” to catch: ping pong balls and old wine corks!

Veronika immediately loved scooping these up with the nets. She was so proud each time she made a catch!

It was nearly as much fun when a ball would go bouncing away and she had to retrieve it in her net.

For some early number recognition, I labeled the balls with a sharpie, too, so she could should out the number of each “fish” she caught. Older kids can riff on this idea by catching two balls and adding up the sum!

She was less interested in the corks, but still managed to snag a few in her net. Overall, a simple and watery way to keep pool on the patio.

Acting on a suggestion from Parents magazine, today we made Veronika’s water table full of all the colors of the rainbow!

The key to this fun activity was colored foam soap, a product I’d never used before, but which was worth the cost of a few bottles for the fun. To set up, fill your water table with a little water, have buckets of extra water or a filled watering can at the ready, and let the foamy fun begin!

Needless to say, Veronika was delighted as soon as we squirted out the first batch of foamy soap. “More blue! More red!” she insisted.

She loved filling up a mini bucket, then scraping off a layer of foam with the shovel and filling the funnels and water slide on her table.

She could pour water onto the soap to make it dissolve, or swish it around in the compartments of the water table for a sudsy layer.

And of course then we’d squirt in more to start all over again!

If you want to take the rainbow factor to the next level, add colored water beads into the mix. I was worried, however, that these would bounce off our patio and pose a threat to wildlife, so we quickly scooped them back out again.

The other drawback is that the soapy water seeped off the patio and into the grass. So while it was fun for one summer afternoon, you probably don’t want to make this activity an everyday occurrence!