Anyone have bath time at their house? We do! (most nights 😉) Our animal toys are lots of fun and support language development! Any animals will do; they don’t have to be specifically bath toys.

So what do we do with ours? Sing Old McDonald. Put our animals to sleep and wake them up. Count them. Wash them. Throw them. Hide them. Trade them. Make them swim. Make them fall and help them back up. All things pretend play!

WHAT ARE YOU TARGETING?

-Vocabulary (both receptive and expressive)

-Animal names and sounds

-Opposites (wet/dry, in/out, up/down, awake/asleep, loud/quiet)

-Colors

-Counting

-Following directions

-hand me the…

-find the…

-clean up

-Singing

-joint attention (shared focus on an activity or object)

-spontaneous talking

-Social skills

-trading/sharing

-identifying a problem

-helping a friend (or bath toy) in need

STRATEGIES TO USE

-Pause and let them fill in the next words to a song or sentence

-Give them 2 choices with the right choice offered second (I use this for desired behaviors too...Do you want mommy to carry you to the car or do you want to walk? Either choice gets the desired outcome…in the car! 👍🏻)

-”Try again”

-Modeling, if they can’t do what you would like for them to do, show them how with your action and words. (They might not get it right away but they are constantly storing what they see and hear snug in their little brains!)

-When giving directions, do your best to give a why! (Don’t stand up in the bathtub BECAUSE you could slip and fall down and that would hurt.)

You can do this! In fact, you probably are doing some of this already, so celebrate that! I hope your next bath time if full of celebrating and singing some “E-I-E-I-O!” 🎶 Sidenote…anyone else have some vintage pink bathroom tile?? 🤗

🧡Mrs. Marci