Rainy Day Bubble Painting for Kids
The rain was pouring down outside and my kids were starting to get restless and grouchy. It was time to pull out the bubbles. I’m not sure why, but bubbles have always had a calming effect on my kids. When they were upset as babies and young toddlers, blowing bubbles fascinated them and helped take them from sniveling to giggling within a few minutes.
Their collective love of bubbles has carried on over the years and we enjoyed bubble painting for the first time back in Autumn. It was a big hit. Now it is a staple activity for us and a regular rainy day set up.
You will need:
- Cups (we used plastic disposable ones)
Straws
Paint
Washing up liquid
Water
Towels on standby!
Mix up each color for your bubble painting activity in a separate cup. Start with a splodge of paint and a squirt of washing up liquid into the bottom of the cup. Then half fill the cup with water and give it a good mix together with a straw.
Now for the important part. Very carefully demonstrate to your kids how to blow into the straw to create the bubbles and explain why they shouldn’t suck the mixture up into their mouths. Don’t panic though if they do suck up a little by accident, as they will soon spit it out, as it won’t taste too good. If you are concerned though about the amount of bubbly paint mixture they have swallowed, then a quick call to your doctor might be in order.
You can set a theme for your bubble painting pictures or just free style it and see where the session takes you. For this particular session we had no particular aim in mind (apart from getting through another hour of a day stuck indoors).
The kids started out as usual blowing their bubbles and then placing paper over the top of them to print them on the paper. They chatted together deciding what their pictures looked like and started mixing the different colors together. Then I’m not sure if it was because we had been stuck indoors for so long or what, but then the bubbly fun started to get a bit bubblier and bubble painting was abandoned for something much more fun!
Bubble Volcanoes
They decided that Bubble Painting was so last season, the hot new trend in bubbles is to ditch the paper and blow bubbling volcanoes all over the table. This new technique prompted some of the biggest bubbles the kids have ever blown, which obviously fueled their enthusiasm (and general giggling hysteria by this point).
By this point the table was a mass of bubbly mess (“watch out for hot hot lava mummy!”). But the kids were having such a fun time, so I tried not to see the bubbles slowing edging towards the floor. Cleaning up together at the end would extend the activity and by then it would nearly be tea time (obviously being stuck indoors all day really does send you a bit crazy as well as the kids).
Then if the bubbles hadn’t already gotten big enough Freddie managed to blow one so big that he lost his straw inside it! Turning the activity into a bit of a science experiment, as they tried to work out how the straw out of the bubble without popping it.
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