Welcome to the classroom! We love to play, learn, create and sing together in the classroom, and we’d like to encourage our classroom friends to keep learning and playing at home once Caitie’s Classroom is over. We’ve put together activities and resources so the playing, learning, creating and singing doesn’t have to stop once Caitie says goodbye. Try these out at home or in your own classroom, and have fun!
This episode is all about staying clean and healthy habits. Caitie talks about the importance of washing your hands with soap and how to do it properly to get soap in all the right places. She also explores all the fun there is to have at bath time with bath toys and bubbles! Tobee even makes a special appearance to share his favorite bath toy – bath crayons! This is a great episode for little ones who are working on their healthy habits and bath routine. It’s also a great reminder that washing our hands with soap is a great way to help us stay healthy when we need it most. Read on for ideas and tips on how you can recreate all the classroom fun from this episode at home for more learning and more fun!
Washing Our Hands
Washing our hands is an important part of staying healthy. It is important that little one understand this and that they practice their own hand washing skills!
- Encourage your little one to follow along with Caitie as she pretends to wash her hands. They can practice all the steps by pretending!
- Once you’ve practiced pretending, try it with a real sink and soap. Do the same movements you did with Caitie, but this time for real.
- Caitie says it’s important to wash our hands with soap for 20 seconds, and you can sing a song to make sure you are washing for long enough. We sing a version of This Is The Way, but you can also sing your ABCs or the Happy Birthday song. Let your child pick a song to be the hand washing song each day!
Soap Experiment
This is a really neat and simple experiment that shows the importance of washing with soap that you can try at home
To recreate the experiment you’ll need:
- A shallow bowl or dish
- Water
- Soap
- Pepper
Fill the bowl with water and sprinkle the pepper into the bowl so it floats on top. Pretend that the pepper are germs or other small things that we can’t always see on our hands. Have your little one place their finger in the water and see what happens – the pepper should stick to their finger. Now add a bit of soap to your finger and try again – this time the pepper should float away from the soap!
Washing With Paint
When we wash our hands with soap, we want to make sure we get the soap in all the right places, all over our hands! Sometimes it can be trickier than you think! Try this experiment at home to practice with your little one.
- You can use gloves, or if you’re brave – go without! Just make sure you are using non-toxic, washable paint. Put a little bit of the paint in the palm of your hand and rub the way you would while washing with soap and water. Take a look at your hands – did you get the paint everywhere? What are some ways you can rub your hands together so the paint gets everywhere it needs to be.
- Once you have tried this, try to remember how you rubbed your hands together so you can do the same thing regularly with soap and water.
- Once you have finished, you can try now to wash all the paint off your hands or gloves with soap and water!
Washing In The Bath
We can clean our whole bodies when we have a bath!
- Ask your little one what parts of the body they wash when they are in the bath.
- Try playing a game like Simon Says! Simon Says, wash your arms! Simon Says, wash your nose! Try giving a command, for example Simon Says, wash your head! But wash another part of your body instead, like your feet! See if your little one does what you say or what you do! This is really silly and fun to have them correct you, and it’s a great way to practice parts of the body vocabulary.
- Try using parts of the body flashcards, like these flashcards from the song One Little Finger. Hold them up one at a time and have your little one pretend to wash that part of their body. You can also do this in the bath and they can wash that body part for real! This is a great activity for little ones who are starting to learn how to wash and bathe on their own.
- You can find lots more activities and songs for parts of the body review here.
The Bath Song
The Bath Song is a great song to practice and pretend taking a bath, or to sing along during your real bath time!
- Sing along with Caitie in the classroom!
- Try changing some of the words to include other body parts so you can get your whole body clean in the bath.
- Find lots more ideas on how to use The Bath Song for more learning and fun, including the gestures, by watching our How To Teach series episode: The Bath Song.
Animals Taking Baths
Animals have their own special ways of keeping clean!
- Pretend with Caitie to be different animals taking a bath.
- Try to imagine how other animals might stay clean. Do you know how a pig stays clean? It is pretty interesting… they actually roll around in the mud to get things off their skin to stay clean!
Playing In The Bath
Bath time can be a lot of fun, and a great time for development.
- Try different bath toys! While your little one plays, ask them questions about colors, sounds, size, etc.
- Little ones can develop fine motor skills by squeezing sponges or bath toys.
- This is a great time to introduce some sensory development – talk to your little one about the feeling of the water and the temperature. Introduce words like hot and cold.
- Experiment with items that sink or float!
- Use cups in the bath to explore more, less, empty and full.
- Explore colors with bath blocks or bath crayons!
Bubble Snake
This bubble snake is amazing – it never disappoints. With a simple swap for a bath friendly soap, you can use it during bath time too!
- Find everything you need to know to make your own bubble snake!
- The bubble snake will work with any kind of liquid soap. Be sure to use bath friendly soaps when using in the bath, like bubble bath or bath soap.
Bath Crayons
Bath crayons are Tobee’s favorite kind of bath toy! The bath crayons we used during this episode were purchased from a toy store and you can find lots of options for purchase online.
- You can try making your own bath crayons as well!
- Use bath crayons to draw shapes, practice colors, even using them to draw letters and numbers. Let your little one’s imagination go and see what they draw.
- Try playing a drawing guessing game in the bath by drawing items that you use to stay healthy!
- Ask your little one to draw a certain kind of animal- if that animal lives in the water, they can draw the animal under the water. If the animal doesn’t live in the water, have them draw the animal on the bathtub wall, outside of the water.
Find more songs, episodes, crafts and activities for staying clean and healthy here!
We hope you have fun singing, playing, learning, and creating! We love to see photos of our friends having fun in the classroom and of their wonderful creations! You can share them with us through social media or by sending us an email to hello@SuperSimpleOnline.com.
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