Baby Bath Station

I have been planning on doing a baby bath station for Oscar and Millie to play with for a while but our only dolls at home were soft or had batteries in them so over the summer on my ‘to buy’ list was a hard baby doll. I managed to get a couple of really cheap dolls whilst in the UK so finally I could prep this activity for an afternoon after school last week. I fully expected that Oscar would get completely involved and enjoy bathing the baby and that Millie would probably sit there and splash in the water. How wrong was I?! After watching Oscar for about 10 minutes, Millie began copying Oscar’s actions and was placing the flannel on the baby’s face and squeezing the soapy water from the sponge over the baby! She began washing the baby in her own little way! How wrong was I?!

Oscar loved this activity as often at bath time he takes a few of his plastic toy animals in the bath with him and usually washes them so he loved that he was able to do the full baby bathing thing with his doll. He washed its face, its hair and its entire body as well as drying the doll with the towel on Millie’s changing mat and adding talc, baby lotion and with my help, even put a nappy to his doll. It’s definitely an activity that we will try and do on a regular basis as it good for naming body parts, learning about hygiene and of course its lots of fun and easy to set up! Next time, if Millie is playing again like she was this time I must remember to include two dolls at our baby bath station as there was a bit of fighting for the baby going on!

Materials:

Box (with soapy water inside)

Baby Doll

A towel

Baby washing items (flannel, sponge, cloth etc)

Bath toys (rubber ducks etc)

Additional Items – Nappy, talc, baby lotion etc – optional