Swimming Pool Scrabble

A few hours each week I take off my "mom hat" to teach water aerobics.  One of my goals when teaching this group of adults is to try to incorporate a little fun (while still working hard) into each class.  Today I'm sharing one of my class favorites, (Swimming Pool Scrabble),  and showing how to make it age appropriate for your children.

Supplies Needed: sponges, scissors, permanent marker


Cut sponges in half.  Write letters on each sponge (we only put letters on one side, but you can easily make these "tiles" double sided to give you more spelling options).   

Throw the "scrabble sponges" in the pool, then swim to collect all of the pieces.  Both of my children are still learning to swim - so instead of making it a competition, we worked together to collect all of the pieces, or would take turns swimming out to grab a letter.

Once collected - play an age appropriate game of scrabble.  With my 3 year old, we worked on putting the letters in alphabetical order, and finding the letters that made up his name - with my 5 year old, we'd see how many simple words we could form using the letters she had collected. 

Throw them back in and start over again.

In addition to being a fun and active way to play with letters, this game provides an excellent way to improve stroke technique/efficiency (by having to reach for the letters) without seeming like "swimming instruction".

What are your favorite pool toys/games?