Next in our Baby Sensory Play series are the wonderful, limitless possibilities of water play!
Every experience for baby is a new one and filled with amazing opportunities to learn about how things work, cause and effect, relationships between people and objects and what things can do. This is why babies investigate their whole new world using their senses as their main tool for discovery, as just about everything needs to be touched and tasted to be truly understood!
Babies and toddlers are particularly drawn to water, not only because of the familiarity of their womb environment, but also because of the calming effects it can have, as well as being one of the most exciting materials to explore on the face of the planet!
Just think about how incredible it is as a play substance. It can be held, thrown, sprayed, dripped, trickled, poured, swooshed, soaked, absorbed, sprinkled, coloured, scented, funnelled, spun, frozen, melted evaporated and, best of all, SPLASHED! It’s a great way for discovering about temperatures, capacity, gravity, water ways, dams, filling and emptying and more.
For a baby who is newly discovering their amazing world, this is the most incredible thing ever!
- sensory: investigate and discover the world using all of the senses, as appropriate
- phse: respond to differences in their environment e.g. showing interest or excitement
- maths: develop an awareness of shape, form and texture as they encounter people and things in their environment
- physical: use movement and senses to focus on, reach for and handle objects, use movement and sensory exploration to link up with their immediate environment, reach out for and touch objects
- knowledge and understanding: anticipate repeated sounds, sights and actions
We definitely have two water babies! If ever in doubt, add water! 🙂 Swimming and water safety is so ingrained in us Aussies, maybe because of all our lovely warm weather. Gently tipping water over our babies’ faces is one of the first lessons we are encouraged to do with our babies. LOVE playing with water 🙂
This looks so fun! But how do you prevent LO from upturning the plate with water?
This is a fairly heavy dish so she couldn’t flip it up. Not sure it matters too much, but just use something secure or heavy?
Wow, that was a fun 30 second activity. Perhaps try the heavy dish next time 🙂
I was wondering the same thing! I have a baby who’s curiosity would extend to what was underneath the bowl of water as well as splashing with the water itself! Our highchair has a tray which I think I could put the water into directly so I think I’ll give that a go. I’m sure my little girl will love it, it looks a lot of fun 🙂
Direct into the tray is PERFECT! And I would do that if I had one too!
My baby boy loves the bath, much more tgan his big brother ever has. Funnily enough one of my tasks this afternoon is to pick up some food colouring for tonight’s bath 🙂
Unbelievable how quickly your little one is growing up!!!!
Maggy
We introduced water play with a table my mother bought baby for his birthday, since then every cup of water is spilt onto the Highchair tray and splashed!!! He loves water! This is a good idea, how did you colour the water? I’d worry about staining what ever the water gets splashed on.
Xx
Love these!!!
Gorgeous pics. A fun way that we do water play with baby is like you, in the highchair tray, but try with some milk bottle lids as well. They float and zip around and are great for baby to track and grab.
I love, love, love that I was told by a friend to look at your ideas! I had my first baby 3 months ago and although so she was so incredibly planned for and wanted I am the most baby retarded person ever! I had no idea what to do with her and the 5 million toys we’ve bought or been given. For now she just likes to be read to and watch her mobile but thanks to here I now have ideas and somewhere to reference! I love Bean’s play space and I cannot wait to do fun water play at the end of summer when she will be about 5 or 6 months. Thank you so much!