Our WONDERFUL Water Wall

         This week is Water Week at our preschool's bridge camp (an optional program between our school's last day and the local school district's last day).  I have been seeing water walls on Pinterest and really wanted to make one.  I originally planned to use a pegboard but decided to use plexiglass instead because I because I wanted a wall that was very portable and able to handle a lot of kids. I started by going to Home Depot and buying a 36"x 48" sheet of plexiglass, clear plastic tubing, and small nuts and bolts. Because I wanted some color and flexibility I  bought pop tubes from Amazon.  I also collected  the adjustable coat rack that I had bought years ago at Target for my pocket chart, zip ties, lots of different sizes of plastic bottles,  funnels, my hot glue gun,  duck tape and my drill.

        I began by adjusting the coat rack to be the right height.  The plexiglass was slightly wider than coat rack but I decided that that would make the board more sturdy.  I propped the plexiglass next to the coat rack and started drilling holes about 1/2 inch below the top of the plexiglass and zip tied it to the rack.  On the sides I drilled holes on both sides of the rack and then attached it with the zip ties.  The plexiglass is easy to drill (I left the protective plastic on until I was all finished).

Tube wrapping around the edge.

I then just started drilling holes and attaching bottles with the nuts and bolts.  I put holes in the bottles with a punch tool.  I attached the tubes to bottles with hot glue (I just put a lot inside the mouth of the bottle) and then wrapped the connection with duck tape (partly just to add color).  Sometimes I cut holes in the side or bottom of bottles, other times I drilled lots of holes in the bottom. My son got involved at one point and brought up a big drill tip (the kind you use for drilling a hole for a door knob) and we put a hole in the middle so we could have one of the tubes go from one side to the other.  We also put large holes down one side so we could wrap a tube around and edge of the the water wall (and the frame).

I tried to have places that the kids could add water at different heights on the board.  I also made several places where water came together from 2 different places and a few spots where the kids could move a bottle to change the direction of the water. The kids LOVED the wall.

They really loved, loved, loved the wall.  I loved that the kids quickly figured out that they could put a cup under one of the places that water came out to collect water and they worked together to "give" each other water.  It was so much fun to see the little engineers following the paths and "experimenting" over and over! Tomorrow we are going to use colored water for a little color mixing fun.

The total cost of the wall was probably $50 (give or take a few dollars because I had some of the materials around the house).  A pegboard would have been cheaper (the plexiglass was almost $30) but I love the fact that the kids interacted as they used both sides of the plexiglass.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolics' Monday Made It.