Making Bath Time Fun

Each one of my kids is fond of water and yet, have resisted taking baths at some point or the other. While there is no excuse to skip a quick daily bath on hectic school mornings, I do like to indulge them in some bath time fun on holidays that makes them want to never leave the bathroom! I let them bathe together in a grown-up bath tub filling it only 1/3rd. Here are some things we do in our house to make bath time fun.

Streams of Water

I recently posted a short video of my baby playing with a thin stream of water from the tap. She loves to do that! And so did her older siblings when they were babies. Babies love to try and catch the ‘stream’ of water which looks like a long rope to them. You won’t believe how long they can continue to try to ‘catch’ it. I make them sit when the bath tub is only filled a little, and let them play with the stream until we have the required amount of water in the tub.

Favorite Character Bath Products

Except for the littlest one, for whom I trust nothing but Johnson’s Top to Toe Wash (available everywhere these days – even at the local medicine shop), I try to get bath products featuring my kids’ favorite cartoon characters. Popular Disney characters like Mickey-Minnie and Disney Princesses are very easily available in India. Newer entrants like Doc McStuffins are not available yet and if I manage to source them from international websites or when shopping abroad, it adds even more fun to the bath! My boy, fortunately, hasn’t had enough of Superhero stuff yet and is happy with Spiderman and Avengers stuff easily available online.

Bath Bubbles

What fun is a bath in the bath tub minus bubbles! Once the bath tub is filled with water and the ‘stream’ needs to be turned off, we add some bath bubbles under flowing water and in a minute, the entire tub is filled with fluffy and bubbly foam. It’s now time to let the games begin!

Creative Products

My daughter also loves this L’Oreal Kids Set of Very Berry Strawberry Shampoo and Conditioner. It is available online from Amazon India (Shampoo, Conditioner) and Flipkart. I loved the quality of this shampoo and the strawberry smell is really cute. It reminds of a special edition shampoo that Parachute came up with, a few years ago. They introduced two shampoos for kids – one with strawberry fragrance and the other with chocolate. Wonder why they were discontinued?

What’s Bath Time Without Bath Toys!

Kids are really creative when it comes to playing and you do not really need to invest in a set. They can play with pretty much anything. Give them a kitchen colander and some pots and pans from the kitchen to play with, in the water, and they will be happy. But a dedicated set is very colorful and appeals to kids. Besides, we Moms do need an excuse to shop, don’t we? I love this bathtub set that we have. It comes with a hanging rod with suction cups that stick to the walls of the bathtub and has several interesting bath toys like a faucet, a mini colander, a water mill and a boat. I bought it from Shoppers Stop during their annual sale and got a great bargain.

Besides these, we use toys from our beach set that we take annually to Goa. We bring our water squirters, pails, watering cans and shovels from it and add to the bath tub. Within a few minutes, all the toys are off the hanging rod and into the water. Even the bath products lying on the bath tub corners land in the water very quickly as you can see!

Mouldable Foam

This is a fairly new entry to our bath activities. I have always loved bath foam. It gives me a very luxurious, spa-like experience. But I hadn’t bought any for the kids yet. Then we received this Peppa Pig mouldable foam which came all the way from London and the kids have a blast with it. It is a very thick foam that the kids can shape like modelling clay and makes for good fun. I wouldn’t really use it as a substitute for soap or shower gel since I did not find it’s cleansing or moisturizing properties impressive. But it does make for fun play time!

Starting with plain water streams,\ and then adding bath bubbles, foam and toys makes the children beg for more bath time. I have to pull the drainage plug out and empty the tub out to make them stand for their final shower!