Bath Time Ideas: 8 Fun Activities for Kids
Bath time with your kids can be a war of worlds. Who’s will is stronger? Your’s or your 3 year old commander in chief? You both have different missions. You just want to wash off the jam in their hair and remove the mud between their toes. They just want to splash around or worse still, not take a bath at all – leading to a torrent of wails and screaming. In reality, bath time can be a golden opportunity to spend quality time, create great sensory experiences and expand their imagination.
Bath Time Senses
Teach your baby about textures, surfaces and senses. A dry towel, a wet flannel, a rubber duck, slippery soap, a squidgy sponge, disappearing body cream, warm and cold. You’ll be teaching them about the world and how to interact with it.
Drop coloured ice cubes in the bath water for toddlers to chase around. It’s an excellent way to teach about warm, cold and different colours. Plus, it’s great fun! To make them, next time you’re filling your ice tray, just add a drop of different food colourings to each section.
Bath Time Crafts
Let your kids use the bathtub as a blank canvas with DIY bath crayons that wipe off. Learn how to make them here.
Another great idea for bathroom crafts is self adhesive fab foam available from hobbycraft or amazon. Best suited to slightly older kids, you can work on lots of different projects and keep kids distracted, making bath time something to look forward to, rather than dread. Just look at this amazing murial from filthwizardry.com.
Make soap, bath bombs and fizzles with your kids prior to bath time. It will make them more enthusiastic about bathing, they won’t be able to wait to use their soapy creations.
This one is really simple. Simply fill two to three spray bottles with a mixture of water and one drop of food colouring and shake it. Then make a foam bath as you would normally and hand the colour filled spray bottle to your little one and let them loose.
Bath Time Science
There are lots of interesting ways to introduce a fun learning environment to bath time.
For fun, write lots of creative messages in invisible ink all around the bathroom for your kids to discover. Then switch off the lights, and with a submersible black light torch, they can play CSI and find all the different messages. It’s a great chance for them to discover how invisible ink works. You can get invisible ink pens from any good crafts store.
Kid’s love science, and weird Get some glow sticks from the pound shop and drop them in the bath for some glowing fun! Or better still, make the whole bathroom glow with glowing bath water. Simply add tonic water (it’s safer than glow water) to the bath as you’re running the taps. Then switch the normal light off and turn the black light on. This simple trick will make the bath water glow blue. Your kids will be in awe.
These quick tips are (largely) hassle free, and it saves you the head ache of having to argue your kids into submission when it’s time to have a bath. Instead, start getting creative and they’ll be begging you to stay in the bathroom for longer!