Bubbles

On Friday we tackled another activity from our Summer List:  Blow bubbles in a new way.

Actually, we tried three different ways to blow bubbles:
Really BIG Bubbles
Tiny Bubbles
Bubble Snake Maker

As Griffin put it, "We made bubbles stuff out of trash."  He cracks me up.  I just followed the tutorials on the links above and made our bubble devices in a very short amount of time.

We happen to have a lifetime supply of drinking straws in our house.  Seriously.  Someone gave Jared this bag of straws 7 years ago as a silly birthday present, and we still have this many left:

In addition to the straws, these are the supplies I needed to make the various bubble makers:

We already had the water bottles and the rubber bands.  I bought the cotton twine at Walmart (in the hardware department) and I bought a super cheap hand towel because I didn't have one I was willing to cut up.

Tip:  We ended up taking the rest of the towel outside so the kids could wipe their hands and wipe the bubble devices before they put their mouths on them.

We headed outside with our finished bubble makers, two disposable pans to hold the bubbles, and a jug of bubbles (you can make homemade bubbles, but we already had these on hand).

We had four kids (my 3 and my niece Layla), but I decided to just make two of each bubble device and let the kids rotate them.

The Bubble Snake Makers were easy for the kids to use, and they loved the bubble foam that resulted.

The Tiny Bubbles straws were easy to use, but they didn't seem to keep the kids' attention very long.

Griffin combined the Bubble Snake Maker and the Tiny Bubbles straws:

The Really BIG Bubble Maker was more difficult to use because my pans were too small and because you have to be sure to load it with bubbles correctly.  But Nolan and Layla figured it out.

The kids really seemed to enjoy playing with bubbles in new ways.

Layla tried blowing on the Really BIG Bubble Maker:

Griffin made "bubble hands"...

And a bubble beard:

Nora mostly played in the yard and made "bubble feet."

I would definitely say this bubble activity was a success.  The kids had a great time.

After we were done with bubbles, the kids wanted to put our new lawn chairs in a circle and sit together.  Griffin entertained himself by counting his fingers and toes.

He said, "Mom!  I have ten fingers.  Five plus five is ten.  And I have ten toes, the same as my fingers.  I have twenty fingers and toes.  Ten plus ten is twenty."

A few minutes later, Layla said something about two weeks from now.  Griffin turned to me and said, "Mom, two weeks is fourteen days.  Seven plus seven is fourteen."

We may have a mathlete on our hands.  Perhaps I need to add more math-related activities to our Summer List!

Jessica