Think of babies and water and what comes to mind? Rubber duckies? Water-soaked towels and wet floors? Bubbles and belly laughs? Watching the glee on your baby's face can make bath time a highlight of the day. But babies get more out of water play than just lavender-scented skin and shiny hair. Motor skills are developed, and memories are made – even if they are a little damp.

Rae Pica, children's movement specialist and author of Your Active Child: How to Boost Physical, Emotional and Cognitive Development Through Age-Appropriate Activity (McGraw-Hill, 2003), believes babies enjoy water because they're fascinated by its qualities. "[It is] so unlike anything else they experience," Pica says. "It's clear and wet. It flows through their fingers and makes a sound when they slap it. Some things float on top of it, and other [things] sink to the bottom."

When babies are encouraged to splash with hands and feet, they're getting a full-body workout that helps improve coordination, balance, muscular strength and endurance, Pica says. "It can even involve cardiovascular endurance. And although they won't know or have the vocabulary for these principles for many years, they're learning about such things as flotation, evaporation, volume and measurement, cause and effect and absorption."

Bath time is one of the favorite parts of the day for Charlotte Stackpole. "Since [our baby] was very young, my husband, Mark, and I have made an evening ritual out of bath time – from the fun of getting undressed to the soothing lavender-scented lotion she is lathered in before getting into pajamas," says the Manteca, Calif., mother of two.

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