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Beyond the Bubbles
Bath Time Makes Learning Fun
By Laura Cone
Howie Baker, the executive director of the Lemberg Children's Center and Center for Early Childhood Development at Brandeis University in Boston, Mass., says parents should plan ahead for bath time. He says toddlers and their parents may have an activity earlier in the day such as folding paper into boats and items that float in the water.
Throughout the day, you may sing songs or develop a play with different animals that carries over into bath time. Make bath time an extension of playtime.
"Kids will learn a lot more from play than they do from being told," Baker says. "Certainly, if you are saying blue out of nowhere they don't know what it means. You have to point to something blue. Things need to be in context, and play provides a context for learning."
Since physical movement helps builds the neuropathways and connections in the toddler's brain, it's important to encourage your toddler to splash and move in the bathtub.
Toddlers are learning about how some words have different meanings. They need to experience a context to understand the words. When trying to teach a toddler about the word "cow," show them photos of a cow on the Internet, a cow in a field in real life and a toy cow in the bathtub (or rubber duckie!).
Since toddlers don't understand abstract concepts, it's pointless to have them memorize numbers unless they understand what the numbers represent, Baker says.
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