Animals Bath Station | Sensory Play Ideas

How can you go wrong with water play, right?! Which child does not like slapping around and frolicking in water!

My little Aquarian boy is no different and absolutely loves the water. He loves his bath time and always asks for a few minutes extra after bath to play around just a bit. It always calms him down after a long day or a cranky tantrum and makes him happy.

My boy is a little person who loves when there is a procedure to follow or a structure in place. So when I set up this animal bathing station, I did not just let him go wild on it. I guess that would have been fine too, but I knew a little procedure would be loved by him, so I gave him a little demo with just one animal...

I asked him to first dip the animal in soapy water. Then place it in the little bath tub. Then, spray water on it using the squirt bottle to rinse off soap. Use the towel to wipe the animal, off dry. And finally place the animal in the other bowl!

...he followed this procedure meticulously and repeated it with the rest of the animals one by one, giving me enough time to go finish up my lunch prep! :)

How I Set it Up:

• As in the case of all our sensory activities, I first spread out our plastic sheet on the floor to contain any mess.
• I used our big sensory bin as a base onto which I placed a smaller sized rectangular tray with water in it. I added a few drops of his bubble bath solution into this tray with water and ruffled up the water to make little bubbles in it.
• Beside the tray, I placed a squirt bottle with clean water, a strainer from his beach set (in case he wanted to use that to fish out the animals), a little bath tub that we got along with some bath toys.
• Then, I placed a towel and an empty tray outside the big bin for the washed animals to be dumped in. 

• I placed a tray full of toy animals next to the bin from which he was to take a few animals at a time and dunk them into the bubbles solution for a bath!

He loved this activity and was so engrossed in it for a very long time. Most importantly, he was very careful with the mess and there was only minimal spillage of water outside the buffer bin.