Bath time is a special part of our family day, the three of us usually gather in the bathroom, the small boy in the bath playing with his toys, we sing songs and play really imaginative games (usually involving pirates, octonauts, submarines and a range of aquatic animals). Sometimes one of us joins him in the bath, mostly these days we don’t. It’s a special time, we’re all winding down from our day, relaxed or relaxing and because we’ve always made sure it was special family time, he loves it too, even having his hair washed.

H&A and Tots100 are putting together a Bathtime Fun Squad and have asked a whole bunch of lovely parent bloggers if they’d like to join. They sent us the Bathtime Buddies Alphabet Set to try out, with the instruction that we were to “get creative”. So first off, I wrote a little ode to our family bath time…

Bath times are never drab times
Always fun times
Father and son times
Wash mummy’s hair times
Please don’t wee in the bath times.

Stop splashing, don’t splash, how many times?
Special times, funny times
Play times
Imaginative times
Ahoy there shipmates times

Wash your face times
Learn your ABCs times
Bathtime buddies, rubber duckies
Shampoo and bubbly bath times
Family times, full of love times

Tell me about your day times
Did you really wash your face times
Nearly time for bed times
Rest your weary head times
Bath times are the best times

My poetry never ever rhymes.

Then I ran a big bubbly bath and we played with our alphabet letters. The Alphabet set contains 65 letters with duplicates, sadly my tub didn’t have any A’s so we improvised with an upside down V, he did manage to make lots of words and had lots of fun trying the find the right letters and talking about the colours and sticking them on the tiles.

The letters stick very easily to tiled walls and surfaces. Just wet them and press them gently against the surface. The letters are a lot of fun and really useful for us as we’re at the learning and identifying letters stage. He is starting to be able to spell simple words by himself now, so I think he will use these over and over at bath time.

When you’ve finished playing with them, the lid of the tub has holes in it, so when you’re done you can just scoop them up, put the lid on and turn the tub upside down to drain.

The Bathtime Buddies Alphabet Set is only £3.30 and it’s available from Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Wilko. I think the set is really good value for money, a fun thing to play with in the bath and importantly, they’re educational. I’m all for learning through play these days, education by stealth is the future.

Note: I was sent the H&A Bathtime Buddies Alphabet Set free of charge for review purposes. All images and opinions are my own.