Welcome to week 8 of ‘Toddler Tuesdays’. You can find more of our ‘Toddler Tuesdays’ activities here, we hope you are enjoying them. This week’s activity is Dolly takes a Bath.

You will need -

A doll or other washable toy.
A plastic tub full of warm water, you may like to place it in the bath, on the sink, laundry bench or a tiled area.
A flannel.
A towel for the floor and a towel for dolly. A small hand towel may be adequate for dolly.
Soap, either liquid or bar, whatever your family uses.
Optional - a small bath toy
Optional - a toothbrush

Instructions -

Get everything ready before introducing your child to the task. Encourage them to undress dolly and then bath dolly in the same order that your child would normally experience their bath. Sing your regular bath songs, wash dolly, brush dolly’s teeth, let dolly play, finally take dolly out of the bath and wrap in the towel. Use appropriate language along the way asking what comes next, encourage identification of objects that they need or want and body parts. Do not leave your child unsupervised with baby’s bath water.

Focus -

Imaginative play is vital for social and emotional development. Imitation is one of the first forms of imaginative play and many children will naturally imitate things that they see and do. Some children however don’t develop these imitations naturally and tasks such as the activity for today help them to better integrate some social and emotional skills that they may be lacking. This activity also promotes language development and sequencing.

If you try out one of our activities please let us know what your toddler (and you) thought. Feel free to leave a comment here or post an image or comment to our Facebook page. If you enjoy the activity we would encourage you to share this post with your friends.