10 exciting water activities for in the swimming pool

It’s also important for everyone to warm up their muscles gradually to avoid injury. Make sure to warm down too after getting out of the water, by slowing down and stretching again. Always warm up on a dry, safe surface to avoid any slips or trips, especially on the water’s edge.

When swimming, make sure everyone knows how to keep safe around water. You can try our water safety activities.

Remember to remind everyone to walk around the pool and follow the safety rules of the venue you’re using.

If people are less confident in the water, they could help referee the game from the side. People should always take their time to get confident being in the water.

To play Sea stacks, everyone should get into small teams. The teams should be in the water on one side of the pool. 

On the opposite side of the pool to the teams, place some pool floats and set a timer for five minutes.

The first person from every team should swim on their front from one side of the water to the other. When they reach the floats, they should take one and place it in the water to begin a stack. They then swim back to their own team.

When they’ve returned, the next member of each team can then swim to the other side, pick up a float and add it to their teammate’s first one, being careful to balance it on the stack. 

If the stack falls, the team must start again.

Everyone should keep going until time is up. The team with the tallest stack wins.

Gather a selection of objects, such as hoops, floats, wellies, rubber ducks, ping pong balls, pool bricks and batons.

Use a pen to mark the bottom of the objects with a score, such as 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100. You could also have a scoring system where each of the same item has the same worth, such as ping pong balls being worth two points and rubber ducks being three points. 

Throw the objects into the water. Place some items in the shallower part of the pool and some in the deeper end.

Everyone should get into small teams and line up in the water. Each team needs an assigned area, such as a bucket, hoop, cone or space, at the side of the pool.

Set a timer for five minutes. One person from each team should dive under the surface to retrieve an object of treasure. When they come back up, they swim to their side and put the treasure in to their team’s area. They then tag their next teammate, who’ll dive in and bring back another piece of treasure.

When time is up, each team counts up the scores on the treasure they collected. The team with the most points is the winner.

To play Easy water polo, place a pair of goal markers on either side of the water. If you don’t have posts, you could use cones on the side.

You may want to play this game in shallow water, so everyone can stand in the water and touch the bottom. You could play this game width ways.

Divide the group into two teams. One player in each team will be the goalkeeper, while the rest will be outfield players. 

The teams are aiming to get the ball into the opposing team’s goal area. The winning team is the one with the most goals at the end.

To start the game, the ball is thrown from the side into the middle of the water. Possession goes to the player that reaches it first.

Any player holding the ball is not allowed to move, either standing still or treading water. They must throw the ball within 30 seconds of receiving it.

A game is split into four quarters and each quarter is four minutes in length. The teams should change ends at each break and consider swapping their goalkeeper.

You may want to play this game in shallow water, so everyone can stand in the water and touch the bottom. You could play this game width ways. 

One person is the ‘Octopus’.

In Octopus tag, all the players have to stay in the pool. The ‘Octopus’ shouts out ‘1, 2, 3, go!’ and everyone needs to swim away.

Everyone should move around and try to avoid being tagged by the ‘Octopus’. 

If a player is tagged, they join hands with the ‘Octopus’ and can help to tag other players. 

Each player tagged holds hands with the players attached to ‘Octopus’, until eventually you have a long line. 

The last player left in the game wins and becomes the next ‘Octopus’.

Fill a clear, empty two-litre bottle with pool water, then close it tightly.

Divide players into two teams and have the teams move to opposite ends of the water, facing away from the centre of the pool. Ask everyone to close their eyes.

Without anyone looking, throw the bottle into the water. The clear bottle will blend in and become almost invisible at the bottom of the pool.

When you say ‘go’, the teams can turn around and try to find the bottle. The first team to find it wins.

You could use ten smaller bottles of water and ask teams to find them. The team who finds the highest number of bottles wins.

Marco Polo is a simple game that can be played with two or more players. 

To play, choose one player to be ‘it’. That person closes their eyes, or is blindfolded, and counts to sixty. All players must stay within the water at all times during the game.

While ‘it’ counts, the other players move around in the water. The other players can move around the pool, though no-one should leave the water or get out of the pool.

When ‘it’ has counted to 60, ‘it’ needs to keep their eyes closed. They try to tag the other players, using only the sound of their voices to find them.

To help find the other players, ’it’ calls out ‘marco’. In response, the other players call out ‘polo’, no matter where they are at that time.

When a player gets tagged by ‘it' they then become ‘it’ and the game starts over again.

Pick one player to be the ‘shark’. The rest of the players will be ‘minnows’.

The shark should go to the middle of the water. The minnows gather in the water at one end of the pool.

When the shark yells ‘GO!’ the minnows have to swim to the other end of the water, without getting tagged by the shark.

If a minnow is tagged, the minnow becomes a shark. 

As you play, the group of sharks will grow and the group of minnows will shrink. The last minnow to survive without getting tagged wins the game.

Everyone should get into pairs in the shallow end of the water. People may want to wear goggles for this game. If anyone doesn’t want to go underwater, they could help people to think of the message.

One person in each pair will be the messenger. They need to think of a message, usually one or two words. The other person will be the guesser. The pair should go underwater at the same time. 

The messenger should shout their message loudly underwater. The pair then come back up and the guesser has to say what they think the message was. 

You could consider giving the messengers a theme, such as animals or fruits, to make it a little easier to guess the word.

People could swap playing guesser and messenger. You could try playing Broken Telephone in this way and pass a message down the line, with people going underwater to receive the message. 

Try putting together a water obstacle course for players to go round and complete. You could also let people work in pairs. People may want to wear goggles for this activity.

You may want to time each person and see who completes the course the quickest. While people are waiting to go, they should sit at the side of the pool.

You can make the course as simple or as complicated as you like, depending on who is playing.

Some options might be:

• Jump in the deep end.
• Swim through a hula hoop.
• Swim across the pool and touch the side of the pool with your big toe.
• Float on your back for five seconds. 
• Try to do a handstand. 
• Collect a toy from the pool floor.
• Dive and snatch a ring from the bottom of the pool then swim with it on your foot.
• Pick up a floating ball and throw it into a bucket on the pool side or floating basketball net in the pool.

Remember, you can customise a water-based obstacle course to meet the abilities of the players. If anyone doesn’t want to take part, they could time the other players.

Everyone should gather in the shallow end of the water, either in a circle or in two groups facing each other.

Two players are chosen to be the ‘fishes’. They should stand in the middle. 

The players on the outside throw the ball back and forth and try to keep it away from the fishes in the middle. 

When a fish does finally catch the ball, the player who was responsible for them being able to get it goes in the middle and becomes the next fishy.

People can swim after the ball and possession goes to the player that reaches it first.