Tabletop Soap Bubbles

 
 
 
Tabletop Soap Bubbles

(E was 27 months old.)





You’ll need:    

  • Water.
  • Dishwashing liquid.
  • Straws.
  • Towel.
  • Table or other surface.



How to make Tabletop Soap Bubbles:

  • Mix 4 parts water with 1 part dishwashing liquid.
  • Dip a towel (paper towels work fine, or any kind of cloth) into the bubble solution and wipe it on the table.
  • Dip a straw into the bubble solution, hold the straw at an angle in the wet area on the table, and blow.





How it worked for us:

 

The whole family got into this, and we made bubbles inside bubbles

Bubble inside a bubble.
 
and whole colonies of bubbles.
 
Bubble colonies.
 
They were fairly sturdy and that made them even more fun to pop.
 
Straw inside a bubble.
 
 
Straw inside some bubbles.
 
E was able to make a few small bubbles herself occasionally, even though it was a bit tricky for her to get the angle right and keep still enough to make them bigger.
 
Toddler making a tabletop soap bubble.
 
It didn’t bother her when she didn’t succeed, though. She just kept right on trying, and popping them all was the most fun to her, anyway. She had a blast. {The two straw technique didn’t really work out – not for blowing bubbles, anyway 😉 }
 
Popping some bubbles.
 
 
Popping some more bubbles.
 
We went back to this activity about ten days later when we somehow were unable to get the mixture right for regular soap bubbles, and it was a big hit again. We went through the bubble mixture quite quickly.

When it was almost gone, I added some green food coloring to see if we could make green bubbles but it wasn’t quite as dramatic as I’d envisioned it. The part of the bubble that touched the table was green but the rest didn’t really change color. {It actually looks better in the picture than in real life 😉 }

Green bubbles.
 
Only after we’d popped a bunch of bubbles that were made with the green bubble solution did the table turn green enough to make it look a bit more interesting.
 
Green bubbles.





What I learned:

  • E immediately realized that it wasn’t a good idea to suck on the straw. I’d been a bit concerned about that possibility when we started, and I wasn’t going to direct her to blowing bubbles herself but of course she really wanted to once she’d seen Papa and me do it. It was a relief that she didn’t have to go through trial and error to know that she needed to blow only.
  • These bubbles are really quite sturdy, and we had fun poking our straws in them and seeing how much it took to pop them. You can even put your finger inside but we had more premature pops from that.



Additional suggestions:

  • Take the activity outside to let the weather impact it. Freeze some soap bubbles if it’s cold enough!
  • Let soap bubbles land on water.

 

Inspiration: I saw this activity at In Lieu of Preschool.



 

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One Comment

  1. we loved this web site we are gonna use it often

    Reply