Early Learning Centre Bathtime Baby Ducks

I thought it was time that I wrote a review about these little ducks which Hope plays with every day without fail! They are certainly a very simple concept but they entertain my 2 year old on a daily basis in a way that none of her other toys do (well except for dolly I suppose!) so thought they deserved to be reviewed!

They were bought for Hope for Christmas so we have had them eight months now. They were from The Early Learning Centre and I think they cost £6 for the pack. They came in a brightly coloured cardboard box and there wasn't any struggle to get into it so they were a big hit in my opinion from day one! I hate it when children's toys are overly packaged and hard to get into!

What do you get?

In the box you get four plastic ducks which are all a different colour. They are red, green, blue and yellow with red beaks and little white and black eyes. They are roughly the size of my palm so a good size for little hands to be able to pick up and grip for themselves. They are a tough rubber, by this I mean that they are not squeezable unlike many bath time toys. They can be squeezed a very small amount by an adult if you apply quite a lot of pressure but they are not intended to be used to squirt water but to be interacted with in a playful, imaginative manner.

Playing with them

To play with these toys it's all about imagination and appealing to young children's open minds. Many bath toys are quite fancy now. I know when I was young I just had basic rubber ducks and was perfectly content with them but whenever I see bath toys in shops now they are very interactive with abilities to squirt, draw, squeak etc. Hope does have a few of these more 'fancy' toys but they just do not attract her attention as much as these which has actually surprised me!

When Hope was first introduced to these she was just interested in holding them, studying them, turning them around and occasionally having a gnaw on one of them and I guess this is what young babies and younger toddlers would do with these toys. They would be a good way to distract a young baby from the stresses of having a bath and help to engage them in something bright to focus on. Since Hope has developed a lot over the last 8 months she has been able to name these ducks "Mummy, daddy, Hope and baby" and has created little roles for them. Whenever it's bathtime she will interact with these as though they are a little family of ducks and always lines them up in a certain way. When it is time to get out of the bath she lies them on their sides and shushes them as though it is bed time! It is lovely watching her use her imagination with them like this.

Bath time usually lasts about twenty minutes and the majority of this time Hope spends playing with these ducks, having them swim around the bath, jump off the sides, kiss each other and generally interacts with them her little imagination running wild.

Education

These toys are educational in that they encourage children to use their imaginations and this is an important part of a young child's life as it helps to broaden their minds and explore the world around them. It also helps children to understand their worlds and to appreciate different concepts.

These ducks have helped Hope to learn different colours. She can now name the four colours of the ducks and will pick up the correct one if I ask her for a particular colour which is certainly something which I'm not sure she would have learnt so quickly if it wasn't for these as so many of her toys are multi-coloured or not played with frequently enough to be so easy to pick up on the colours like these are.

Children can also learn basics about animals about how ducks like to swim, how they have beaks, how they have wings and little tails and other features of a duck. Hope still refers to the beaks as noses but I'm sure eventually she will learn they are called beaks!

My negatives

What I have found to be a shame about these products is that they have become quite mouldy inside and this is because they are a strong plastic so you can't squeeze the water out of them after a bath. They have a tiny hole on the bottom so whilst they are in the bath they do fill up with water but it's very difficult to get this water out. I try to squeeze them but they are hard and the wings and beak dig into my hands as I try to get the water out so I am never able to get all of it to leave the inside of the duck. This has only really become a problem recently as the area around the hole has become black with mould and when I've squeezed the water out bits of mould have escaped too so I dread to think about the amount of bacteria which must be inside. This isn't great considering Hope often puts these in her mouth. It has come to a point now where I think these ducks will be thrown away and a new set bought to replace them as I don't like the thought of how long we've had them and how much mould must have built up over that time.

Conclusion

I still find it amazing that these ducks are so simple yet provide the most entertainment at bath time than the other toys we have that do so very much more. Hope has a bath every single day and it is every single day that she will reach for these ducks and play with them quite happily. I would have thought she would have become bored with them by now or perhaps not want to always play with these but that's certainly not the case, it's as though she looks forward to playing with them and seeing what adventures they can get up to each day.

I like the size of them, they are not so small that they would be a choking hazard or awkward for small hands to hold but they are not so big that they take up too much room on the side of the bath for storage. The toughness of the plastic is good in terms of they are robust so if your child gnaws on them they won't develop holes in them but this does then mean that you can't squeeze all of the water out of them after a bath so it can cause some problems with mould build up over time.

The colours of them are great, they are bold and not overly fussy so that your child can focus on them and not be overwhelmed by patterns which I think is particularly important for babies who can struggle to focus on toys which have too much detail on them.

These are good classic bath toys and I'm really pleased to see that they have been such a success with Hope. I think it's a shame that they do build up mould over time but then again they are fairly cheap so replacing these with a new set isn't too much of a problem.

Oh one word of warning- they may be toddler proof but they are not puppy proof! Hope's grandma has a set of these at her house and sadly the yellow one is no more after their puppy managed to chew it's way through it! So be warned!

These are great toys and I definitely recommend them to you!