Bath toys

[tomps]

Any indispensable bathtime toys you've found for your little person ? Dd (15mth) is currently fascinated with pouring water and happy with a few plastic cups and turning tap on & off, but I get a bit bored ! I'd also be interested in what other household things you use in the bath - watering can / funnel ... i need some ideas. Cheers.

My 2, 2 and 5, love having those re-sealable freezer bags in the bath! They fill them up, seal them, then squeeze them until the seal opens and splashes all over them!! One bag can last a week or so!

An empty shampoo bottle is great for squirting (if you don't mind being a target occasionally!). Other than that, ping pong balls bob about nicely.

Dd was given those Tomy 'do re mi' dolphins which I thought would be a 10 minute wonder, 2 years on they are still played with EVERY night - although the games have changed as she's got older. As I type most of the rings are over the shower head from last night's hoop-la session..

Ds1 loves his bath books (22 months)and will point to the pictures constantly. He also loves empty bottles for filling and pouring. Buckets and even playing with the bath mat - pulling it around him like a blanket.

I dont think you really need purpose made toys as it's the water that makes the fun!

DD (10 months) adores all of her bath tpys and got loads for Christmas. In fact you can hardly get in the bath nowadays! I can't wait for the house move when she will have a bathroom to herself. LOL!

Her favourites at the moment are the Teletubbies bath toy that sticks to the bath side. She also has a really cheap plastic boat which she adores. What else? Bubbles - she thinks there are great and they don't stain things in the bath! She laso has a shower head from ELC which she likes playing under but she isn't strong enough to push it yet.

As you might have guessed, with all this our bath times take ages!!!

Twink, ds was given those 'Do Re Mi' dolphins and they got played with a couple of times and that was it!

His fave thing is very simple - a small plastic bowl with a few little holes drilled into it that he uses like a sieve. He loves to hold it up high and watch all the water trickling through. Hours and hours of fun!

My ds who is 3.5 loves my pastry brush!! He has used it for a long time now just pretnding to paint the bath and the tiles. He also loves his little watering can. He just fills it up and pours it out. He has lots of other bath toys but those two are his favourites!! It is great what
keeps them happy.

Lorna

after a hectic day, ds likes to have a couple of candles instead of normal lighting in the bathroom and I find that it helps calm down the whole bath experience!

sis, how earth did you come round to discovering that, do you like candles?

I know it's going off the bath toy thread, but my dd1 loves it when i light an incencse stick and all the candles, she can sit hours watching the flames flickering and all the shadows.

still relating to bath times, do folk use the bath mats, my ds is now 7 months and sitting in bath very well, but i'm in with him!, are they a wise buy? ds is still happy to suck the flannel, not interested in any toy we get for him!

I don't use a bath mat but i tend to sit my dd2 in a bath seat, then she can sit unaided and play with what she wants and I don't have to get in with them (dd1 insists that her little sister must not have a bath without her), tried it once and dd1 went mad.

You'll need a bath mat when they start standing up or trying to move around independently when in the bath. It is for the best as a sudden dunking can be quite frightening for them.

I always thought bathmats were an excellent idea and used to take them on holiday too. Obviously with a very small child you have to be there all the time anyway but with a slightly older one it does reduce the risk of capsizing while your back's turned.

Sis, my dds loves candles at bathtime too! They take turns in singing Happy Birthday when the time comes to blow them out!

Yes Chiccadum, i like candles but the discovery was really due to the fact that he is obsessed with the seasons/weather and the sun, moon, clouds and stars at the moment, so it started out with the bubbles in the bath being 'snow' and vaious other bath toys being used to depict the sun and moon and from there, it seemed like a good idea to light a couple of candles to the starlight effect!

Batey, i will try the happy birthday idea too as all things relating to birthdays are a guaranteed hit too

At 15 months we still use the baby bath inside the big bath to save water. The best toy ever has to have been a set of stacking cups. Some of them have holes of various sizes, so many happy hours are spent making rain, pouring water from one to another and helping to empty the bath.

A water wheel still provides fun for dd but her best bath toy now is mermaid barbie and mermaid shelly (has her own shower).

My 2 are slightly older (nearly 3 and 4.5) but lost interest in "normal" bath toys ages ago. They prefer to pour things and now like the challenge of pouring into narrow necks - empty matey bottles are current favourite. Empty washing up bottles also great for squirting. Its not that I'm tight or have a bit of a blue peter attitude - these are just the things they choose themselves. Anything I buy (like the lovely little wooden boats from Christmas) seem to get ignored.

A water pistol from a christmas cracker is daddy's favourite bath toy, but not so popular with the sluglet.

I really like the ping pong balls (where do you buy them ?!) idea, and candles sounds nice - will use up all those nite lites from Ikea that are cluttering up the kitchen drawers ! dd's current faves are empty squeezy tubes which bubble under water, and rubbing bubbles into my face Hard

I just mentioned this on the other thread but I just remembered that we use food colouring in the bath sometimes and ds thinks it's really exciting. They can turn the water different colours too with careful mixing. Not great if they're e number allergic but otherwise they don't seem to stain children or baths ime and they're cheap if used sparingly.