Our great friend, Clio, turned two last weekend. Clio loves water play; so I wanted to include something ‘water-y’ with her gift. Happily, I recently stumbled upon this tutorial over at The Brooding Hen (yet another great DIY resource), for Hardware Store Bath Toys. Perfect!
^^^Here’s what we made. (There are some extras in there for Sam and Eleanor.)^^^
^^^You need some PVC bits and pieces- you know- elbows, straight bits, those t-shaped things, etc. Our neighborhood hardware store only carried small bits, but bigger would be fun too (you could also just cut your own from one long pipe, Marc reminded me).^^^
^^^You also need some small suction cups. Here’s the thing- they must be like the cup on the RIGHT. See how it has a little lip around the part poking out? You need that. The one one the left is too flush, and will not work for this project.^^^
^^^One suction cup per pipe bit seems to work fine, if they are small pieces like ours.^^^
^^^First, drill a hole in your PVC piece. A 3/8″ bit worked for us.^^^
^^^Next, use something to shove that little suction cup pokey piece through the hole. Marc used a flat head screw driver to do it.^^^
^^^That was the only difficult part of this project. When he successfully got a suction cup attached, Ellie and I celebrated.^^^
^^^As soon as these are made, get that kid into a bath for some water play!^^^
(Warning: Sam got very excited about these and began making ‘waterfalls’ right away. We soon discovered, however, that when he yanked them off the tile, the suction cup would sometimes come out of the pipe. Thus, we need to go back and do the hard work of stuffing them back into those bits! So, unless you figure out a better way to keep these attached, maybe moving them around is for adults only until little fingers have a bit more finesse.)