It might be a fun way to cool down in the heat, but water play also contributes a huge amount to early childhood development and could become some of a child's first memories, according to educators.
The low-intensity heatwave that hit the capital this week provided the perfect opportunity for young minds to engage in water play.
ACT Playgroups program manager Carley Jones said the warmer days made it easy to do the messy activities with water.
"There's actually a multitude of benefits that come with water play," Ms Jones said.
"It can be done in winter with warmer water, but once the kids start splashing themselves they get a bit cold, so it's better in the warmer months."
She said when she was younger she went to a preschool with a creek so she spent a lot of time in the water.
"We spent a lot of time making pretend fishing nets and using mum's kitchen equipment to pretend to catch tadpoles," Ms Jones said.
"And then making mixtures of everything that we could with the water to make pretend cakes and potions.
"Children really engage with water."
She said that kind of play for children had never really changed. The key is to do it safely by always keeping watch, and emptying the water at the end of the activity.
Questacon early childhood program co-ordinator Belinda "BJ" Anyos said play in general was good for learning, and water was a great vehicle for that.
She said the obvious benefits were for children to build foundations for basic scientific understanding, and a classic example of that was the ability of a rock or a stick to float or sink.
Testing that concept, often again and again, was a great experiment to help children develop their understanding of the results.
She said water play could introduce concepts like cause and effect, basic math skills like full and empty, and could improve language development. Words like drizzle, droplets, deep and shallow, slippery, slimy, cool and warm were all words that children could learn when playing with water.
"Many parents don't realise as they play with their children that they're helping their children learn all these fundamental things," Ms Anyos said.
Fine motor skills could be improved by pouring, squeezing and squirting, and gross motor skills through hand-eye coordination, she said.
"As a little kid is learning to pour from one container into another, for us it's a simple thing, but for kids they're learning hand-eye coordination, the concept of filling up, transferring volume from one to another, cause and effect, what happens when I pour it fast or slowly... there is so much learning involved when you just give kids a couple of containers."
She said being the instigator of such discoveries could be very powerful, and first memories are often associated with achievements.
"Just by playing and discovering they're being little scientists, learning about the world around them," she said.
