Hue & Splash Bath

At the moment we're working on Bee's colours with her, starting with the four that are the most common in her toybox: red, yellow, blue and green. It's been difficult, I mean, how do you explain what colour is?? So I've been trying to think of new ways to reinforce colour for Bee and try to make it a little easier for her. 

One of Bee's favourite activities is to play in the bath (or any kind of water really) and so, armed with a selection of red toys and red-coloured shaving foam, we tried our very first Hue & Splash Bath!

 It was lots of fun and Bee really enjoyed painting everything in sight with the shaving foam! We used building blocks and toy cotton reels to make prints on the tiles, painted both Bee and her doll, used the spade to scoop water, played 'peepo' with the shopping basket and generally made a great, big mess!

This activity actually turned out to be really good for Bee's sensory issues. The foam was very messy and a texture Bee would normally shy away from but in the bath she was quite willing to use it as a paint. It helped that she was able to immerse her hands in the water to wash them if the sensation of the foam got a little overwhelming. 

The activity took a little trial and error: red food colouring just turned the bath a really muddy brown and did not mix at all with the shaving foam, much less turn it red. I decided to try some water-based kids paint with the foam and it worked really well, needing only a small drizzle to make sure it was red and not pink. I decided not to use any colour in the bath, by the end the water had graduated from pink to red anyway thanks to the foam!

I had been a little worried that the red would stain either the bath or the tiles but thankfully it washed straight off. The grouting might be a tiny bit pink in places but a small price to pay for so much fun! Up next: green!

Materials used:

• Normal bathtime items: towel etc.
• Coloured toys of your choice.
• Shaving foam (not shaving gel)
• Water-based washable paint
• A container for your shaving foam
• Something to mix the foam and paint