Early Learning in the Bathtub-please help me brainstorm!

[Kerileanne99]

Okay!
Calling all creative EL moms! PLEASE help me brainstorm:

Alex, like most children her age, ADORES bath time.  She will spend an hour in there if I let her, and gets extremely creative...so I made a series of Montessori-style boxes of activities for her to 'choose' from at bath time and constantly add to it!
However, I have recently run low on new ideas to try so am begging creative inspiration!

Here are some of the 'themes' of old or current 'bath boxes', although they often get intermixed:

We have foam letters and numbers for spelling words, signing words, or doing phonics work...

We have foam numbers. That we use, as well as foam mathematical symbols I have cut myself, for doing equations...

We have a set of plastic measuring cups, measuring spoons, graduated cylinders of various sizes, beakers and Erlenmeyers of various sizes, as well as measuring spoons, etc...we also have a homemade conversions chart I have laminated and posted above bathtub.  Not to mention silly things like washing hair and rinsing with measuring cups..."should I rinse your hair with 8 oz., or 1 cup....Silly mommy!!!!" type thing!!.....

We have musical instruments that use volumes of water, such as these:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I7ZHO4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
They actually work remarkably well, and there are others like:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002L515G/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

We have also made a laminated Grand Staff that is on the wall above the bathtub to 'stick' foam notes on.

We use a lot of color in the bath, including letting her paint the sides of the tub with regular watercolor paints and paintbrushes, mixing color, doing scenes, letters, and numbers...
She also has this:
Which works really well:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ICNZR0/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&smid=A3R5B0NCMQ6TC8
BTW- we also give her a child-sized sponge to clean the bathtub when she is done

Let's see...
A density box to see what floats or sinks
A thermometer for checking and recording the temperature of her bath...which is most 'pleasant, etc...
A blindfold for scents of soap and shampoo...
Teapot, cups, saucers, utensils for tea parties for play, manners, vocab...
Language days where we count bath toys or only use specific languages in the tub...
Phases of matter experiments/ temp where we brought in buckets of ice to the bath...
Flags and geography with foam puzzles...
She has a human body skeleton puzzle made of foam that I have labeled the foam pieces...we put 'foam' organs in place and discuss...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0008JIL90/?tag=hyprod-20&hvadid=15470261739&hvpos=1o5&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1453769491162997288&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&ref=asc_df_B0008JIL90

Not to mention blocks for building and sorting, plus any of her regular EL toys that will be okay in water...even Cuisenaire rods will float! Our newest is foam 'pizzas' I cut to practice fractions...

So! Again, calling all creative EL moms to help with new ideas!!!!!
Please, please!!!!

[Kimba15]

I do loads of EL in the bathtub to. Here is another Idea I laminate french words and then use the water to stick them to the tiles on the wall and they stay put. WHich is great for language lessons, I do flashcards in the tub and I read books. I don't do anything else.

I hope that gives you a few Ideas.

Kimba xxx

[Mandabplus3]

We use the educational music in the bathroom, it's a confined and echo-ey space great for top volume singing. I run away, mine are old enough to bath without me plus if it ever got quiet I would know there is a problem! 

[Tanikit]

I also use the bathtub a lot for EL. You seem to have done a lot with her already however.

 We like to read science books and there are a lot of experiments in there with bubbles, sink/float, surface tension etc that we can do in the bath. I do often just read to her when she's in the bath and she plays with whatever she chooses. I mix plastic toys up so that she can use her imagination (sometimes helped along by Mom) to create and narrate stories. I have also laminated all sorts of cards - shapes, words, letters for spelling - we also go through word groups and tell stories with the words we make no matter how silly they are. Flashacrds have been used to teach nouns, verbs etc as well. Using shaving cream and whiteboard markers on the tiles for drawing and writing has been fun. When I started running out of ideas we went back to the old ideas and because she was older by then they did get used in different ways. I also have been more likely to bring out books now that she is older and can listen better (and not wet the books too much - sigh the baby hasn't quite got that yet and we lost a book to bath water last night) You can also teach the water cycle in the bath, do a unit on plumbing, put ice cubes in the bath on a hot day and watch them melt - use food colouring in the ice cubes to make the whole bath change colour, buy those toys that start small and grow rapidly in the water.

[Tamsyn]

Wow!  What a lot of great ideas!  I want to use bath time for fun, but I usually just make sure they get clean during that time and fold laundry, haha.

Play at home Mama has some great ideas for bath time.  She has done things like glow sticks in the dark, water balloons with fun trinkets inside that they have to cut open, or food coloring of different colors that, when popped, change the color of the bath water.  She also lets them play with other water-proof light sources.  Check it out!

http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/search/label/Bath%20Time%20Fun

[lelask]

we have not done any bathtub education game due to her eczematous skin but now it looks like we found what was causing it so I might try some of your idea!!!
BTW the skeleton floor puzzle is fantastic!

Thanks for inspiration  Karma

[CVMomma]

Thanks for this post!  Lots of great ideas.  We have the foam letters and numbers, so we can start there!  Tamsyn, thanks for the link!  I will have to look for other cheap EL things for bath time now too!

[A_BC]

we have not done any bathtub education game due to her eczematous skin

My toddler has eczematous skin too. So no bubble bath for him and I usually use very mild organic body wash/ shampoo. It's OK to keep him for a prolonged time if the water is lukewarm, plus, he loves playing in the bath.

Here are some of our activities:

- 100 chart laminated and taped on the tiles
- Montessori transferring liquid activities (sponges of different sizes (to see how much they hold water), baster, dropper, tongs, containers with different shapes, sizes and types of handles)
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Marshmallow math tea parties with rubber ducks using these cups: http://www.amazon.com/green-sprouts-Stacking-Cup-Set/dp/B002KCNEDG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345217769&sr=8-1&keywords=green+sprouts+cups
What I also like about these cups is that they are so versatile ( nesting, sorting, patterning, counting, pouring water from one cup to another, watching how the water comes out from the holes: making a correlation between the number of the holes and how fast the cups will empty, etc)
- float/ sink experiments, etc.

[Krista G]

Great ideas, ladies.  The world would think we are nuts!  I think it sounds like a whole lot of fun.

Lelask, what causes the eczema? 

[lelask]

A_BC it depents on type of excema . If it just dry type it is ok for a bath but if the excema is looking like red infected patches the water makes it even worse. The bath really made her cry ( and me).


Krista the excema in our case was caused by food additives!!! After being strick with food she has been stabilized for a month. No scratching and I finally get my well deserved sleep at night

[Kerileanne99]

Thanks so much for the replies ladies!
It's hilarious, isn't it? As Krista G said, the world would think we are crazy, that we are stifling, ruining our children's fun and creative genius!
BUT!
I think a recent post by Annisis and creativity sums it up! Tonight at bath time I gave her foam die! The Learning Resources set is foam, so floats, and includes numbers, operations, greater than/ less than, etc....so, after a  good math play,  she had a tea party...serving a dice to each of her guests (making sure that each guest had the same number) on a plate, and carefully measuring out portions of tea in her graduated cylinder (that apparently doubles as a teapot )

Our kids are normal, creative kids...who happen to incorporate their EL into their play! The things they come up with!.....

[cokers4life]

Kerileanne99,

I just stumbled on these wonderful ideas, and I was wondering how you made the fraction pizzas from foam?  Is it just a circle that you colored on to make it look like a pizza or did you layer it with foam pieces to make a pizza?  I have foam sheets so I definitely want to do this.

Here are some ideas also....If she goes through an outer space stage, you could make planets, asteroids, comets, stars and such for her to build the solar system. Gee, you could turn just about any labeling activity into bath time fun with foam sheets.  You probably could make some tangram puzzles out of foam too.   Then laminate some tangram outlines for her to fill in with tangrams while in the tub.  Oh, you could cut out a bunch of circles and build different elements.   I probably could go on with this but you get the point. 

Now where did I put those foam sheets???  I have some cutting to do.

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