Water Play Sensory Exploration for Baby

It is starting to get warmer around these parts and Spring is finally starting to show its face a bit! It is staying light out longer, warming up in the afternoon, and the snow has quickly melted. Soon it will be summer and baby Kingston will be joining Mama and Dada in his Glam*Ma and Grumpy's pool. Since we are not quite at that point yet, I thought it would be fun to do some water play with K.

Kingston has always loved the bath tub. He splashes and goes wild. Now that he is big enough to sit on the side for older infants, he has more control and can explore the water more. Recently, we have started to bring some water toys into the tub with us for K to utilize. However, our baths are usually super quick. Our whole bath routine usually only takes about 10 minutes, not a lot of time for baby to really play in the water. So, I thought it would be easy and fun to use Kingston's bath tub. We got his bath tub for a gift at our baby shower and we absolutely love it. It is The First Year's Infant To Toddler Tub with Sling, Blue.

Usually I put K's tub in the kitchen sink to bathe him, but for water play I decided to use the kitchen floor. I laid down two large damask towels and gathered a bunch of different kinds of bath toys, a rinse cup, and his bath tub which I filled.

When I put Kingston in, he was very excited!

I gave K toys that did different things. The blue toy boat he is holding floats, pours, and also drips water from two small holes. The football and duck squirt water. I gave him the rinse cup to fill up and pour out. He was more interested in banging it on the side of the tub and looking inside of it! I also gave him some pop and lock bath toys.

He really loved kicking and splashing in the water with his feet. I used words like: water, wet, splash, pour, drip, waves, sprinkle, squirt etc. to help Kingston verbally process the activity. I poured warm water down his head and shoulders. I helped him fill up the boat and pour the water out. When the water poured down him, he would open his mouth in a half smile and scrunch his shoulders.

I filled up the duck and football and gently squirted Kingston with the warm water. The pressure from the squirting made him laugh. We spent quite a bit of time playing in the water. I let Kingston have free reign of the water play. He got to choose what he wanted to play with and how he wanted to do so. Of course I was right next to him the entire time. Please remember to not leave your child unattended at any time while they are in the tub!

I tried to not hinder Kingston's exploration in any way. This meant letting him try the water of course.  He put the pour cup to his lips and tried to taste it. He was NOT impressed!

After he was done playing in the water, I washed him up real quick and we were done.

Water play is a great simple sensory activity. I look forward to eventually trying some of the fun sensory baths that I've seen on Pinterest. In the summer, we plan on putting a baby pool out on the deck for Kingston to play and splash around in on hot summer days. The rest of the summer will be spent exploring the water at my parents house in my childhood pool. It will be fun to eventually teach K how to swim in the same pool that I learned to swim in! He will be in the water a lot this summer. We are fostering a little fish baby. The swim diapers are waiting for his cute little butt to use in a few months. In the meantime though, we will continue to explore fun ways to play with water inside!