You know those times when your kiddo needs a little something extra special just for them? Like time alone that doesn’t feel like forced time alone? Well this spa bath for kids has become one of our go-tos in those situations and is exactly that… Time alone that feels special {maybe even a little bit luxurious} and not at all forced. It’s the perfect really chill, relaxing way to end the day and such a good mood booster for us too.
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The set-up is really simple and can really be anything you want it to be depending on what your child loves and what you have in the house.
I always fill the tub up with a good amount of water and set out a towel, a washcloth, and a little ‘welcome to the spa’ of some sort. {Nothing fancy, obviously… This one is a piece of scrap paper from the junk drawer written with blue pen, but I often just write ‘welcome to the spa’ right on the tub with washable marker like I do for all of the little things I put out next.}
Alright – the little spa goodies… These are put in plastic containers (ancient apple sauce container collection for the win!) and I label each one by using a washable marker directly on the ledge of our bathtub. You can play around with different types of markers {washable obviously!} to see which ones work best on your surface, but regular old washable Crayola markers tend to be my go-to as they go on alright and wipe right off without any effort at all.
What you include is totally up to you, but I always go with the same 5 labels… ‘wash’, ‘scrub’, ‘soak’, ‘sip’, and ‘snack’.
‘Wash’ is almost one of two things… A couple of pumps of Moon Baby (or go to wash for both kids) or castile soap from our foaming soap dispenser (just put castile soap and some water in a foam dispenser that we always have on hand). BUT – how fun would it be to put out a chunk of our awesome DIY squishy soap?!
‘Scrub’ is almost always a big squeeze of the maple brown sugar scrub from Back to Earth that I love, but we’ve also done our homemade lemon vanilla sugar scrub and our funfetti sugar scrub when we’ve had them, and both are super fun and delicious smelling too.
‘Soak’ is usually a locally made bath bomb or some of our beloved coconut oat milk bath that Miss G can just pop into the tub when she’s ready.
‘Sip’ is usually fruit water (plain water with frozen fruit instead of ice cubes) with a paper straw to make it fancy…
And ‘snack’ is usually some type of cut up fresh fruit.
And that’s basically it!
When everything is ready I usually put on a calming Spotify playlist, dim the lights, and invite my little guest to enjoy some time at the spa.
She enjoys some time on her own and when she comes out afterwards… You can just tell – she feels sooooo good. Also, Mr. Sam had his very first taste of the spa bath the other night, soaked it right up, and then asked for another one midday the next day – hah!
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Whether it’s been a long day, Miss G is amped up and bedtime is nearing, or I’m in need of a quick and easy “
Here’s what I use to put it together… Organic lavender essential oil, fresh rosemary, lavender flowers from the garden (or other dainty purple flowers if you’ve already depleted your lavender supply like I have) and a couple of drops of purple gel food colouring (yes, the not good for you conventional kind… if you know of an all-natural food colouring that works well, please let me know – I’m desperate to find one!)
While the warm water runs into the tub, I add 3 or 4 drops of the lavender essential oil and 2 drops of the purple food colouring to the stream. When the tub is nice and full, I break up the rosemary sprigs and sprinkle both them and the flowers on the surface. Miss G loves this bath and inevitably, I end up with a bouquet or two in the process.
And cleanup is just as easy. After removing my lovely-smelling babe from the tub, I quickly skim a strainer along the surface of the water to remove the plant pieces before draining the water. Done!
This was an on the fly idea that came about tonight during dinner. G was wearing her bathing suit (as you do when you’re 2 and a 1/2 and hanging out at home) and asked for a ‘special, special, soooooo special bath’ tonight. No go-to ideas came to mind, but my little doodle eating dinner in a ruffled polka dot bathing suit gave me one! … A pool party bath!
I filled the tub up nice and full and added a few drops of aqua gel food colouring to give it a pool feel, then collected a few pool/summer things – beach balls, a watering can, a pail and shovel, some water wings, and a water bottle. For extra fun, I loaded our little bubble machine up with solution and placed it so that the bubbles would flow down into the tub from up above. Gracen grabbed her sun glasses and her pool towel, and we were good to go.
Such a simple idea, but Grae just thought it was the best thing ever. Things did get a little wild when she began trying to pop every single bubble before they hit the water, but it was all good fun. Part way through, we took out our window crayons and added a ‘party wall’, which was just as much fun to splash off as it was to draw on. ☺
Gracen absolutely adores special baths. So much so, that tonight while eating dinner, she was already requesting something fun. “I want a really, really, reeeeeaaaally special bath tonight. Soooo special please, Mama.” I was drawing a bit of a blank at the time, so I turned to Pinterest for some inspiration and found 
While we didn’t have liquid watercolours on hand, all I did was collect a few spray bottles, fill them up with a little warm water, and add a few drops of gel food colouring to each. I was going for vibrant colours, but if you want to ensure that the colours don’ stain your grout and child, you may opt for just one or two drops instead (or just avoid red/pink as it’s the only one that ever seems to stain!)
Then I filled up a big tub full of bubbly water using a bubble wand from 
When ready, she hopped into the water and continued her masterpiece. The fun part was that as she moved around in the water, more white bubbles were uncovered, so there was always a great blank canvas to paint.
Simple spray paints were such a fun addition to the traditional bubble bath. And though I may have been a little over generous with the food colouring, the good news is that our grout is only slightly tinged pink – everything else washed off with a quick rinse with the shower head. ☺
One thing I love surprising Grae with is a fun, playful baths before bedtime. While sometimes that means simply giving her a little container of epsom salts to sprinkle into her tub or putting a couple of drops of food colouring into the water, and other times it means something a little more elaborate (some of our favourites are 
With the water tinted blue with a few drops of food colouring, I added in some blue and green flat glass beads we keep on hand for sensory play, as well as some {well washed} driftwood pieces collected from the beach.
Next, using a large sheet of green craft foam, I cut out several lily pads to float on the surface. While I kept some plain, I added water lily-ish faux flowers to others with a dab of hot glue.
The final addition was these cute stretchy frogs I found at the dollar store. While we have another set of harder ones, I particularly like these because they float and can be stuck to the bath tub walls and tiles.
Gracen absolutely adored this bath and had great fun seeing how many frogs she could balance on a lily pad at once. 
After the bath was done, we simply scooped everything up and put it into an empty plastic bin to dry out. The best part is that next time we’re in need of a sensory bin, all we’ll have to do is add water!
This is ridiculously easy way to amp up the bath time fun, but it may just be Gracen’s favourite of all time. I wish I had a video of the shrieking, jumping, splashing, and balloon batting just to illustrate what a hit it was. Lucky for us, our tub has sliding glass doors, so the crazy was at least contained. ☺
I decided to try this tonight for Gracen’s half birthday, but it make a great regular birthday bath, and would be just as well received any day of the year I’m sure.
Just fill up the tub nice and full, add some bubbles and a bunch of balloons (I think 10 is a good number if you want it nice and full) and let the fun unfold.
Don’t ask me how I come up with these things… Tonight as I was running a bath for Miss G, I randomly decided to surprise her with a special themed bath. I basically gathered up a few things from our 
Gracen was super excited when I dramatically flung open the shower curtain to reveal her surprise bath and immediately jumped in.
I was a little bit worried about her sitting on the hard items by accident, but she automatically cleared them out of the way as soon as she climbed in without me having to say a thing. 
Two things to keep in mind when converting your bath tub into a mini ocean… Make sure the ocean items are washed in warm soapy water first (duh!) and try to pick rocks and shells that are smooth so that no little tushies are poked during the fun.
The huge part of the fun of course is swimming around in the tub with sharks and whales and crocodiles… We got these little sea creatures at the dollar store quite a while ago, but you can find them at toy stores and teacher stores too. 
Tonight Gracen and I whipped up some insanely easy “paint” to amp up this evening’s bath time fun. The best news? It only contains two ingredients.
Before getting started, we rounded up a few things… 
With our materials gathered, we got started by pouring some of our liquid soap into our containers.
Next, Gracen squeezed a few drops of food colouring into each.
And gently stirred the colour into the soap.
That’s it! Less than two minutes later and we were ready for bath time.
Once in the tub, Gracen happily painted the tiles with “numbers” and “zigzags” using her homemade paint. It was a messy, drippy, bubbly good time.
Another perk? We ended up with a blue and purple bubbly tub full of water.
And a squeaky clean toddler who smelled deliciously of almond.