Car Wash for Babies

When Calla was a newborn, I remember seeing a lovely picture of a baby crawling through a cardboard box with streamers made of crepe paper and thinking, "Wow I so have to do that!"

But Calla is an explorer, and she's very likely to put fistfuls of crepe paper in her mouth. I'm not looking forward to cleaning rainbow poo, so as pretty as crepe paper would be, it's not going to be this time. So I made do with socks!



I simply grabbed a bunch of clean socks and clipped them onto a bamboo pole, and voila, baby car wash! Or at least that's what it reminds me of. I hung them as low as possible so that she could have them brush onto her head when she crawled through.

She was really interested when she saw me preparing it and couldn't wait to be part of the action. But once it was fully set up though, she pretended not to be interested. Once she got involved though, she found it tremendously funny and couldn't stop laughing. I mean seriously, even the sight of those socks was enough to tickle her.

She'd touch the socks and laugh then move away to flip a book or two, totally oblivious to the socks. But she'd always return.

She played at pulling at them, and found it really funny when a sock would come off. And then, she realised that clinging on to the bamboo pole was way more fun and started practicing her chin-ups.   

This is a great activity to get crawlers to look up and be aware of their surroundings. They're on their tummies so much that they tend to only look forward or to the sides, at eye level. Touching the socks allows them to experience different textures, and they learn about cause and effect when a sock gets removed from the pole due to their pulling.

A really simple activity that takes no time at all to set up, and it's guaranteed to bring on the smiles.  


Disclaimer: I remember reading about this somewhere but cannot find the original link. If this is your idea, please, let me know and I will gladly give you proper credit.