Bug Bath

Zel LOVES water play. I can't say the word "bath" unless I am going to let him take one. This kid loves water. I decided to incorporate his love of water play and bath time with our bug theme this week. This is really several activities that are all related. So you could do them all or spread them out on different days like we did.

Before you take a bath, you need to get dirty, right? So we had a dirt sensory bin and filled it with pretend bugs, leaves, and dried flowers. Zel dug around with his shovel and every time he discovered something in the dirt he asked, "What's that?" Zel was soon distracted by his ride on car so we moved on to that activity and covered the sensory bin for another day.













That night we decided to grow bugs in the bath tub. Earlier in the week, I bought a pack of the little pellets that grow into sponge shapes when placed in water (it cost $.99 at Michael's). We put a few in the bath and waited for them to expand. Zel didn't really get it and they took a really long time. I think the key is to use really hot water, but Zel's bath was lukewarm. Once some of them did finally form into bugs Zel enjoyed ripping them to shreds. That's my tough guy!


The next day when we were feeling a little bored, we collected all of the bugs out of the dirt sensory bin. Then I filled a pot with warm water and gave Zel a soapy sponge. I told him that the bugs were dirty and he needed to give them a bath. I also added the rest of the pellets that grow into bugs.

He proceed to dump all of the bugs in the pot. 

Then, one by one, he took the all out and put them in his bucket. He then reversed it and put them each back into the water.


Then he took each one out and threw them across the floor.

I then showed him how to scrub each one with the sponge. He chose a few to get clean then placed them back and forth between the water and the bucket.














When he was taking them out of the water, he liked to put his face really close to the water to see the bugs better. Whenever he took out a bug, we talked about which bug it was and what color it was.

He must have been doing this for at least 30 minutes. This is a great go-to activity if you don't mind cleaning up a little water. I usually lay a towel down on the floor to help with any spills.

Turning Failed Bath Crayons into Fun!

I have been really excited about making bath crayons for Zel. I looked up several recipes and it seemed pretty straightforward. Grated bar soap, warm water, and food coloring...how could I mess this up? After the crayons had been drying for over 24 hours, I realized that something was not going as planned. I put the crayons in the freezer, but whenever I took them out they got too soft squished when I held them.



Then I saw this post on Carrots are Orange about ivory soap, which is the kind of bar soap that I used. Ivory soap has extra air in it, which makes sense that it would not get hard enough with water added to it. Now I had all these mushy bath crayons plus two extra bars of Ivory soap. So we decided to give this new sensory activity a try. The bath crayons that I made expanded while they were heating up but as soon as the microwave stopped the whole thing collapsed. I'm assuming that happened because water was added to those. Oh well, but not to worry, I still had another bar of unopened Ivory soap. Zel knew something fun was happening because I put plastic out on the floor plus some tools to explore the material. Zel was already having fun with the plastic sheet and meat tenderizer while the soap was heating up.

Once I gave him the expanded soap, he hit that over and over and over. 

Then I showed him that it turned to powder if you crumpled it with your hands. He tried to copy me and also said "snow" while he did it. His favorite thing (aside from hitting the meat tenderizer on everything!) was to squeeze it as hard as he could while grunting until his face turned red. This is how he shows off that he is strong (He does the same thing if I ask him to make a muscle).

Eventually, the whole bar had been reduced to powder. Zel and I put it all in a plastic container and saved it for another day. We also changed our clothes because we were covered in little powdered specks of soap. Was it worth the clean-up effort? I think so.