Bathtime is playtime

Bath time tends to be a quick thing.

It’s to get clean and on with the next thing. Babies love to play in the water. The LO loves to play in the bath if you give him time. Some days we purposely use the bath as a play activity. I clear a block of time and bring in my book.

He gets to play with his bath toys. Most of them are open ended. He can do all sorts of things with them by himself. He is creative and loves to explore.

Putting things in and dumping them out.

Splashing, scooping,

Experimenting with pushing things under the water, balancing blocks on top of each other, mouthing

There’s not end to what he can do when he’s in the bath- given time.

Playing by himself he has his own agenda and learns to make decisions based on what he wants. This is a big deal for most children as they are driven usually by us to do what we want when we want them to. This is why I bring my current book .  I can safely sit close and read with smiles and just let him get on. However, sometimes they get bored ( a good thing sometimes it’s good to see what they do. Good things can often come out of boredom) or we want to play with them in the bath. Some days we have a mixture of both. He’ll try and hand me a block or car I accept the invite and we talk and play together.

Bath time is the perfect time to boost your babies communication.  Many times we don’t know what to say to our babies . I was reminded in the blog post by Totsy’s place about some excellent ideas for encouraging language learning and communication.

3. Provide a commentary to your baby’s day. Even before your baby can speak, talking about what you’re doing together helps him to associate words with the things he sees. It doesn’t have to be complicated – just pointing out the red bus he’s looking at, or explaining all the delicious ingredients you’re putting into his lunch will be fine.

Source: 10 Tips to Boost Your Baby’s Communication- Totsy’s Place

This is easily done in the bath where you can both focus without interruption. With two other children life gets distracting. Here we both can easily work together on this.

Do you have a playtime bath time? What do you do?