Fun Ways to Make Bath Time Educational

Your child’s bath time is not only instilling good, healthy hygiene habits, bath time holds all types of opportunities for learning through play.  The primary lesson learned through bath time is, of course, proper hygiene.  Your example of bathing your little one helps her to learn how to keep herself clean and why it is important to stay clean.  Remember to talk about soap and how it cleans away dirt and germs than can cause sores and sickness at most bath times. 

To help your child learn to wash herself, and to teach the names of various body parts, encourage her to wash a water safe doll.  Give her a wash cloth and soap, and guide her through washing the entire doll.  Say things like, “Let’s wash baby’s face.  Be careful not to get soap in her eyes.  Remember to scrub behind her ears.” Or, “Now it’s time to wash baby’s leg.  Don’t forget her toes!”  You can also introduce the concepts of right and left with this bath time activity.

Bath time is also a great way to introduce your child to a number of early math skills.  Give your child a variety of cups and containers to experiment with and begin to introduce concepts like empty and full and bigger and smaller.  Let your child play with the containers, scooping water into one ad then dumping it into another, to discover how a bigger cup holds more than a smaller one.

Encourage your child’s creativity and her fine motor development during bath time with fun art supplies made for the water.  Baby Einstein’s Color & Learn Bath Crayons will allow your little one to express herself by drawing right on the side of the tub.  Bath paints are very similar and these products are safe and non-toxic.  You can make your own bath paint by mixing a couple drops of food coloring with shaving cream, but be sure to supervise closely so your child doesn’t get the shaving cream in her eyes or mouth.

The bath tub is an ideal place to explore all sorts of science facts and theories.  Bring a variety of toys and objects into the tub and play a Sink or Float game.  Allow your child to guess whether each object will sink or float and encourage him to tell why, then test it out and see if he’s right.  Experiment with the affects of weight on water by seeing how many marbles he can put in a cup or bowl before it starts to sink.

Get a set of measuring cups and measuring spoons just for bath time.  Let your child discover liquid measurements as well as the concept of fractions by seeing how many times he can fill a cup container with a 1/3 cup or how many tablespoons he needs to fill a ¼ cup.  You can also introduce liquids and solids and the processing of melting, as well as experiment with mixing colors, by making colored ice cubes with food coloring.  Drop a cube into the bath and watch the water change colors as it melts, then see what happens when you add a different color.

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