Playful Bath Time

Materials You Need: Bath toys or a few plastic cups or dishes.   

What You Can Do Together: Since every game is an opportunity to develop, use bath time to encourage thinking. Take a few plastic glasses and explore the cause and effect together: when the glass is full of water - it sinks when we push the glass with our hand - it sinks and floats, when we pour while holding the glass high, and so on.  Depending on his/her interests (follow his/her lead), show these or similar things to your baby while he/she is sitting in the tub.  As you do so, describe what's happening (Oh, look at the cup; it's going down, down in the water. There it goes!").  Encourage various types of movement and encourage your child to enjoy them by smiling at the child or praising him/her every time you see them experiment with something new. This will also encourage your baby's motor development.  Bath time also gives your child a chance to show many different emotions-excitements, curiosity, maybe upset as he or she must finish the bath, a bit of fear if the water seems too cold, and so on.  Notice and enjoy your child's growing ability to express feelings of all kinds.

Every bath can be an opportunity for this type of activity, but in a similar way, you can support your baby's exploration with various materials such as sand, gravel but perhaps also dry rice or any other material.  Be aware of safety; babies love to put things in their mouths, as you know.

What Your Child is Learning: For a baby, this world is still an unexplored place, and in this activity, s/he can slowly understand how things are interconnected and develop understanding and logic. With your help, bathing gives him/her a lot of opportunities to understand how things work, while also having a lot of fun.