Fly Swatter Bubble Wands

We found these huge fly swatters at the dollar store locally.  They make terrific bubble wands with lots of tiny bubbles being created.  They are so much fun to wave around.

They can be found on line on amazon...they are called Texas Fly Swatters , but we only paid a dollar for each one at the dollar store.

                               ( I love this full body movement bubble blowing!)

The other items we put out for the children to explore bubble blowing with were strawberry baskets, paper towel tubes, string, straws, key chains-basically anything that was fully closed in diameter but had a hole in which to blow air.  It is wonderful to see the children experimenting with the different materials, using trial and error and then retesting their findings before excitedly sharing what they discovered with others.

With what can you and your children blow a bubble...make it a challenge!

These fly swatters will be great to paint with as well.  We will be trying that soon, too.  

Beaded Bubble Wands

We had a great time making the beaded bubble wands that I saw over on The Art Parent during our Bubble week at camp.

We used wooden dowels, various kinds of beads and colored wire.

We did end up using duct tape to secure the beaded part onto the wand as some of them would detach after some serious bubble blowing.

This would work even better if we had a stronger wire that was still thin enough to fit through the beads.  These were a bit floppy, but they still worked!

The Boy (and girl) in the Bubble-literally!

We just finished up a fantastic summer camp with children ages 2-5.  One of the weeks we focused on Bubbles.  The next several posts will describe some of the activities we did during this week.  There are still many weeks left of summer, so give these ideas a try.

I am going to start with my favorite activity.  We put the children inside a bubble!  I had first seen this when I went to the show Bubblemania.  You need to check out his website.  He is amazing and now has other people he has trained.

My coworker, Lini, found this fantastic book called Bubble Trouble by Margaret Mahy.


It is about a boy who gets caught in a bubble and gets carried away.  It is a tongue twister of a story that the group found highly engaging.  It lends itself well to critical thinking questions and giving some thought to predicting the ending.

We continued this experience outside by filling a shallow plastic wading pool with homemade bubble mixture; lots of Dawn dish liquid (be brand specific here), water and some glycerin.

We put a stool in the center-this is important for two reasons. It keeps the child dry and sand is bubble mixture's worst enemy!
We put a hula hoop in the pool.
Picked up the child onto the bench and then lifted the hula hoop up fairly quickly encasing the child IN the bubble.

My talented daughter even got the bubble to close around the child a couple of times.

The children were thrilled and wanted to repeat the experience again and again.

One more helpful hint...bubble activities work especially well on damp days.
Give this a try-it was a lot of fun!