One of the very first things I pinned on Pinterest was a tin foil river. I have often wondered if this activity would actually be worth it. Does this actually work? Would the tin foil hold up? Would the boys like it? So we decided to give it a try! Aidan was gone at basketball camp, and it was a good time to do something geared more for the younger boys.

Tin foil river

We used an entire roll of heavy duty foil. I doubled it over before folding up the sides, but there’s not really one correct way to do this. Foil is pretty forgiving. We did have to push down the center into the grass so that the water would flow better. We have a slope in our yard, so we set up our river to flow downhill. Then we put the hose at the top.

If it’s a windy day, you might need more than one person to make the river so that you can hold down both ends of the foil. Once we had some rocks in our river, we had no problems with it blowing away.

Tin foil river

The river is the most fun if you keep the hose running the whole time. That can be fairly wasteful, so we also collected water at the bottom in a bucket and then re-used that water by scooping it up and pouring it out at the top of the river again.

Tin foil river

We were able to get two afternoons of play out of our foil river. Jonathan (age 2) enjoyed scooping and pouring water and trying to get his hands on the hose when no one was looking! Owen enjoyed making dams in the water with rocks and floating Lego boats down the stream.

Tin foil river

I’d say it was a fun activity!

3 Comments

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  1. Lisa @ Farm Fresh May 6, 2015

    This. is. AWESOME! I have two boys who would be all over this. I am definitely going to be doing this. Hmmm. Maybe we need to work a science lesson into this...(says the homeschool mom inside of me). Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Helen Jun 7, 2018

    One of my most favorite activities in reception age children! So much engagement and learning and fun!!

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  3. Melissa Apr 22, 2020

    This is awesome, will try with all my little ones. Thank you.

    Reply

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