Little Adventures Preschool: DIY Water Wall

I had a conversation with my sister a month back about creating a water play area for her littles in their new back yard. Then I set up an activity day with my playgroup for water play and put in the description that I'd try and put together some pvc pipe for playing and exploring and promptly forgot. Just 2 days before said play date I reread the description and found myself suddenly inspired to create a fully customizable water wall. So, off to Lowes we rumbled.

We returned home with pvc pipe in 1/2 inch and 1.25 inch and oodles of connectors as well as wooden dowels and peg board. I put the pegboard up on my fence and started drilling holes in the connectors to add dowels. *Note, drill the holes slightly smaller than the dowels.

I had some help from CJ and EMan along the way. There are a few things I'd do differently and will most likely still go back to fix. I'd add glue to the dowels in the pvc so that they don't come off in the peg board and fall behind it. I'd also glue the tubing inside a pvc connector so that it doesn't fall out so often. I will also fill up the swimming pool farther away from the water wall from now on. We were working so hard on building that we tripped over it too many times!

I did cut all the lengths by hand with our nifty red tool. My hand muscles were awful sore by the end of the day though. I did have great intentions to make numerous 1/2 lengths of pipe (2 half circles from each pipe) but it ends up that cutting pipe that direction is hard!

With pegs in each of the joints we simply stuck pipes in the joints and stuck them to the wall wherever we wanted them.

This became hours of fun. In fact, we spent the entire day doing just this.

I did grab a storage box to keep all the pieces handy for this adventure.

Our setup provided an excellent opportunity for a lesson in gravity. Being a gravity operated water wall we talked about how we had to get the water up higher than the tube before it would all go in.

This activity is awesome because it provided everyone the chance to explore on their own playing field. They could build on the wall if they wanted. They could just put together pieces on the grass. They could splash in the swimming pool. It was great fun for all ages!