Stuff Kids Love: Tub Time

In our new series Stuff Kids Love we explore the simple joys of children. We discuss why they love what they love, what they gain from their play and how you can best use the stuff they love to guide them in purposeful play. This week we focus on tub time.

Tub time, though tons of fun, can be rough because many kids bathe right before bed time. The trick is to keep them entertained long enough so you can soap them up, wash them off and tuck them in. Luckily, there are a lot of productive activities that can help make bath time fun, easy and clean.

You can do many fun things in the tub that you can’t do on dry land. You can splash and get soapy, write on walls and squirt water. You can also take the normal everyday toys and make them even more fun! For example, take a marble run and make it waterproof, and voila! Waterblocks.

Waterblocks by Just Think Toys are a marble run for the bath. Just stick the blocks to the side of the tub wall and watch the marble roll! It’s a great exercise in physics as you must figure out how to get the ball to stay on the track. Kids also crave repetitive play, and marble runs — both in and out of the tub — satisfy that craving.

You can practice counting, spelling and motor skill refinement in the tub as well. ALEX Toys developed a wonderful line of bath products that make bath time a learning experience. Tub stickers are great for letter recognition, word building and exercising those little finger muscles.

ALEX’s line of bathtub writing utensils are great for increasing finger dexterity and hand strength. To use ALEX’s Tub Writers, children must squeeze the colored soap tubes nice and hard to draw on the tub walls. They think they’re 'just playing,' but secretly they’re giving their hands a great workout. Strong hands are helpful for both kids and adults to perform precision tasks like building, crafting or manipulating objects. They’re little hands, after all, are a primary way they physically interact with the world around them.

The bathtub crayons are a unique opportunity to practice proper grip when writing. Some kids dislike sitting and practicing good penmanship. If you introduce writing in a different setting, it could get them to practice through play.

Check back Friday for our weekly Game University post. We're featuring a versatile water game that's great for early childhood development.

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