My son made up this game. He calls it The Bathtub Alphabet Soup Game. It is easy to play, fun, educational, and very clean!
I recently purchased some foam letters – the ones I have are not specifically for the tub, but I see no reason why I couldn’t use them there. So, one day, when my son was taking a bath, I opened up the package and dumped them in. That’s when he told me he felt like he was in a bowl of alphabet soup.
The first round of this game started with just asking him which letters he knew as they floated by him.
We also discovered that they stick to the tub wall when wet.
Then, the game evolved.
I took out three letters (E, X, and A) and rested them on the side of the tub. I asked him if he could identify the E. He was right, so I told him that he got a point. He then took the E and slapped it on to the tub wall like a trophy!
When his back was turned, I replaced the E with the letter Z. Then I asked him to find the letter A. When he found it, he added it to his trophy wall and I again, filled in the blank spot.
Rinse.
Repeat.
26 times.
If he didn’t correctly identify the letter, we simply put the letter back into circulation and would try the same one just a few turns later.
We played the game like this the first few times. As he got more familiar with his letters, we decided to make it more challenging. So, we increased the choices to five letters at a time (and sometimes seven).
My son has also informed me that the bath needs to be extra bubbly because the letters stick better with bubbles. Who knew!
I am sure we will eventually come up with new ways to play with these letters, but in the meantime, he is learning his alphabet while getting clean.
It’s quite an educational way to multitask!
Oh what a fun way to learn! Let’s see what other fun learning games the Quirky Mommas have found…
About Amy
What a great idea! We have some of these foam letters but I haven’t used them in the tub. My youngest loves bathtime so this will be the perfect way to combine bathtime with learning!
You have a captive audience in the bath! Why not sneak some learning in there? Hope your child enjoys it as much as mine does!
Great idea, my daughter is starting to get very interested in letters, she would love something like this.
I hope she has fun with this, Ali!
And when he’s up to beginning reading skills, this will be a perfect way to start recognizing word families. Start with “at” and then just keep changing the initial consonant to practice reading beginner words.
There are lots of word families to play when he’s ready to take this to the next level! We’ve been slowly introducing this to him as he is now interested in how words are created! Thanks for reminding us of how to extend this activity even more!
My daughter (age 3) loves these foam letters. We have created a couple of fun foam letter games (with different degrees of difficulty) to play in and out of the bathtub. Water/bath time learning is always a hit!
http://learningatplay.blogspot.com/2012/01/foam-bath-letters.html