Ducklings Activities to Practice At Home

Equipment Needed - Floating Coloured Balls

Target Age: 3 months +

• This is a simple exercise to be completed in the bath with floating coloured balls
• Encourage your child to push the balls down and watch them pop back up again
• Once your childs mobility begins to develop, you can talk about the different colours of the balls
• Try putting the balls within in different places in the bath so they can independently travel and collect

Equipment Needed - Mirror

Target Age: 6 months +

• This is a simple exercise to be completed in the bath
• Using the mirror, encourage your child to look at their face at water level in the mirror, submerging their chin, then lips while looking at their reflection.
• Bubble blowing and pulling funny faces whilst talking about how the water makes them look funny!
• Encouraging submersion as far as the child is comfortable to go with lots and lots of praise for even the smallest successes.
• Blow bubbles together in the bath, like blowing out birthday cake candles, making big bubbles, small bubbles, noisy bubbles, quiet bubbles, funny bubbles and lots of silly noises.
• This is crucial in helping your childs awareness of breathing in the water, so you can ensure they understand when the correct time to breathe in is. It can be lots of fun for them and can be encouraged further by adding an object to blow through the water.

Equipment Needed - Flannel, Bath Toy and Cup/Jug

Beginner Water Confidence/Breathing Activity for Bath/Shower Time (Ducklings / Stage 1). Always with adult supervision 

Once your child is confident with each step, move on to the next. Your child should to complete the actions themselves 

• Wet face with a wet flannel/sponge/cloth (tip – see if you can leave no dry bits) 
• Scoop water with the hands and wash the face (tip – use lots of water in your scoops) 
• Pour water over head with a cup/jug (tip -see if you can let it run over your face) 
• Submerge mouth into the water and blow bubbles or raspberries (tip - if in the shower you could do this with a full cup/jug of water) 
• Blow a bath toy across the bath (tip – if this is too easy try to do it whilst blowing bubble just under the surface) 
• Submerge the mouth AND nose and hum a tune (tip – humming stops the water going up your nose) 
• Whole face submersion whilst blowing bubbles or humming (tip – pretend you’re looking for fish or treasure on the bottom of the bath) 

Equipment Needed - Bath Toy

Beginner Kicking/Leg Action Activity for Bath Time - actions can be done on dry land if no bath available (Ducklings/Stage 1/Stage 2). Always with adult supervision 

Once your child is confident with each step, move on to the next. Your child should to complete the actions themselves 

• Make some splashes with your feet (tip – maybe close the shower curtain so there isn’t too much mess, but always supervise the child) 
• Stretch out legs and point toes to make legs as long as you can, now splash feet with legs in this shape (tip – knees can flex but shouldn’t be too bendy) 
• Repeat previous step but make tiny splashes just with the toes 
• See if you can make a bath toy move away from your feet as you make tiny splashes with your toes 
• Practice the above kicking action whilst lying on your front (ensure full adult supervision for safety) 

Equipment Needed - None

Beginner Doggy Paddle Arms for Bath Time - actions can be done on dry land if no bath available (Ducklings/Stage 1/Stage 2). Always with adult supervision 

Once your child is confident with each step, move on to the next. Your child should to complete the actions themselves 

• Imagine your bath water is made up of your favourite snacks or toys (tip – ice cream is a good idea, what flavour would you have) 
• Make your hands into scoop shapes (tip – keep fingers together so you don’t let anything slip through the gaps) 
• Use one hand at a time to scoop as much of your snacks/toys as you can into your tummy 
• Keep going with one hand after the other 
• Can you do bigger/longer scoops to get more? 
• Can you do it faster (tip – faster doesn’t have to mean splashy, try to do it without much splash) 

Equipment Needed - None

Beginner/Improver Breaststroke Arm Action Practice – can be done on dry land or in the bath (Ducklings/Stages 1-4). Always with adult supervision if completing in the bath. 

Pizza making practice – decide what toppings you want before you start.

• Imagine you have a big pizza in front of you 
• Start with hands together in front of chest (tip – thumps should be touching). We’re about to cut the pizza in half. 
• Imagine your hands are the pizza cutter. Keeping thumps together, push hands out straight in front until arms are at full stretch (tip – can you stretch bit further, remember it’s a big pizza) 
• Imagine some of the toppings have fallen off the edges of your pizza, we need to scoop it up. From your full stretch, let fingers drop down to create a scoop and bring them around the edge of your imaginary pizza finishing at your chest 
• Repeat points 2-4 (to make sure you’ve got it all)