- Educational floaty toys
If you are teaching your child to recognize letters or to spell her name, buy some inexpensive floating craft foam from your local craft shop. Available in bright colours, they can be cut to resemble every letter of the alphabet, making them perfect for bath-time learning. Or cut out some numbers and teach her to count.
- Playthings from the kitchen cupboard
Many of the best bath-time toys are likely to be found in the kitchen. Plastic food containers like margarine/butter tubs, measuring spoons, large cooking spoons, funnels, colanders, cups, milk cartons — if it floats, pours, stirs or drips, it will inspire your child’s imagination. Plastic lids become floating platforms. Funnels create waterfalls. Plastic mesh fruit baskets will create masses of bubbles in soapy water. (It’s best to avoid wooden and metal items; wood will splinter and get mildewed and metal rusts.) Simple, sturdy plastic items are safe and easy to clean; just wipe down plastic bath toys routinely with a water and bicarbonate of soda solution or run them through the dishwasher.
- Go fishing with a kitchen strainer
A small plastic vegetable strainer lets toddlers scoop up sponges or shapes cut from craft foam and promotes hand-eye coordination, too. An aquarium net will also work. (Thoroughly wash and disinfect a used net first.) Help your toddler to drop her ‘catch’ into a plastic container and count the items together when she gets tired of fishing in the tub.
- Commander of the fleet!
Save wax-coated milk and cream containers, snip the spout off, close the top with a bit of gaffer tape and paint a fleet for your little seafarer in his or her colour of choice, using water-insoluble paint. Give each boat a name, add numbers to the sides and a lollipop stick mast and you’ll have a no-cost bath-rime armada ready to command.
- Throw in the sponge
Raid kitchen drawers and storage cupboards for plain kitchen and household sponges of all sizes and colours, and cut them into lots of different shapes. Your child will be able to play stacking games with floating circles, triangles, stars, crescent moons, leaves, keyholes, doughnuts and whatever else your (and his) inventive mind can come up with. Caution: before turning the playthings over to your child for the first time, disinfect used sponges by either (a) soaking them in a mild chlorine bleach solution and rinsing well or (b) wetting them and then microwaving on High for 1-2 minutes. After the bath, start a good habit by getting your toddler to help wipe the tub with a designated ‘clean-up’ sponge.
- Produce-bag storage
Turn a large, plastic-mesh produce bag from the supermarket into a storage bag for bath toys. (Avoid string bags made of natural materials such as cotton, which can become mouldy and harbour germs.) If a plastic mesh bag has a paper label, it can be soaked off in warm water. If the bag’s drawstring isn’t strong enough, replace it; a length of strong ribbon or plastic string, knotted tightly, works well. Be sure to remove any metal staples or plastic tags that may come with the bag. After your child’s bath, put the bath toys into the bag and rinse them under running water. Then hang the bag from a tap handle or shower head so that the toys can drip-dry.
Credit: Reader’s Digest
Picture credit: Google