{Toy Review} Play with Purpose: How bathtime is upgraded with an occupational therapist’s toys.

I am sure I am not alone in my struggle to get my child into the bath. I think it has something to do with transitions: to get them away from what they are currently absorbed with and unwilling to leave and to entice them into cleaning themselves. Nicky actually enjoys bath time but he needs a bit of an incentive to get started. This is where some bath toys come in handy and I was lucky enough to be sent Oogi and Plui from the company ” Straight Zigzag”.

Straight Zigzag derives its name from the idea that all children do not need to fit into a linear concept of what society expects of them. By providing the opportunity to play and have the right development challenges, they can become the best they can be rather than what society thinks they should be.

I am a big fan of play therapy and used to do this as a volunteer for quite a while at one stage, especially for children recovering from divorce. Kids would play out huge disaster accidents, complete with fire engines and helicopters, to process what they were going through. So I have no doubt of the power of play and the importance of it for children and how it can help them.

Karen Powell, the woman behind the company, is an occupational therapist with a passion for allowing children to play.  Looking at her website and the topics she speaks on for her talks, I think she has a lot of interesting things to say about how we spend too much money on heaps of plastic that do no good as opposed to functional, quality toys that aid development.

Without further ado, then, let me introduce Oogli and Plui, toys which not only help get your kid into the bath, but also help them developmentally.

Oogi is like a man with suction cups. You can stretch him and stick him onto surfaces such as bath, fridge or mirrors. We had fun in the bath making him “ski” = pulling him by his elastic arms as he glided on the bottom of the bath. Nicky also liked to stick his arm on his face.

Plui is a way to let water rain down through holes in the bottom and also control the flow through a hole on the top. Nicky has a similar toy but it is not round or soft so we enjoyed playing with this ball, squeezing it to make the water come out the top as well, like a volcano.

Nicky is very creative with his toys and builds lots of bridges, roads and houses with what he has in the bath. He also has some animals (zebra and parrot). So this past Saturday night, for instance, he had Oogi stuck to the mirror doing some climbing, and Plui giving zebra a shower. (He took a while to get  the concept of making the water go fast and slow when you hold and release the hole at the top)

If you’re wondering how I get him in the bath in the first place, I bring the toys to him and get them to talk to him and tell him how they want to play with them. So I bring zebra and Oogi and get them to jump up and down and tell him how much they want him to come with. Another one I did was to make Oogi “stuck” by his sucker head on the bath and Nicky must come and rescue him.

Both toys are available in different colours and the normal purchase price is R169 and R139 respectively.