Tag Archives: Kids Activities

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Summer Family Fun: Make and Experiment with Giant Homemade Bubbles

The mere sight of a bubble floating by overhead can make even the most harried person stop and smile. Part science, part wonder, a bubble is simply a thin skin of liquid surrounding a gas. But you needn’t know any bubble science to enjoy this fun and inexpensive activity. Best of all, bubbles can be made using ingredients you have around the house. When the weather’s nice, I often make a bucket of bubble solution and leave it outside with wands and other fun equipment so my daughter and others can make bubbles whenever they like. It’s always fun and magical to create bubbles and run around to watch them trail behind you in the breeze.

Recipe for Great Bubbles

There’s no need to spend money on commercial bubble mixes. The best mixes come from ingredients that are inexpensive and easily available. A large batch can be left in a bucket or tub for days without losing its ability to form bubbles. Bubble mixes are best made at least ½ hour before you need them, so they can settle.

You’ll need:

6 cups (or parts) water
2 cups (or parts) Dawn dishwashing detergent
3/4 cup Karo or other light corn syrup
Measuring container
Large tub, bucket or pan (large enough for the wands to fit inside)

Use Dawn brand dishwashing detergent, if you can find it, for large, firm bubbles. Joy is second-best.

If you’re using the same container to measure both the water and the detergent, measure the water first to prevent detergent foaming in the container.

If your water is very hard, you may want to use distilled water.

Stir the solution gently. It should be smooth, not sudsy or foamy.

How to Blow Big, Strong, Long-Lasting Bubbles

Choose good wands or materials.

Ensure that the bubble and bubble tool only touch wet surfaces.

If the day is too windy for big bubbles, seek a windbreak and form bubbles near that.

Make sure the bubble mix is inside the wand or tool.

Blow or wave the wand gently, just enough for the film inside to catch some air. Blowing too hard can cause a bubble to break, or can create many small bubbles instead of one big one.

Make Your Own Wand or Bubble Maker

There are wonderful commercial wands with very large openings in whimsical shapes, available at toy stores and fairs. You can also make your own large homemade wand.

You’ll need:

Two or more wire hangers

Bend a clothes hanger into the shape of a circle.

Unfold a second hanger as straight as you can and attach it to the first to form a handle.

 Create a Bubble Window Maker

You’ll need:

Cotton string with some absorbency

Plastic straws cut in pieces

Run a length of string through the straws in a continuous line.

Leave some string between each straw and knot the string ends together.

See what shapes you can make with the straws.

Try a “bubble window”. When making the window, lift the solution out of the bucket or pan in one plane and at an angle, which will help the film remain within the shape. Put two wet hands through a bubble window and shake hands!

 Slow Tip: Search around your house for other good bubble makers. Six-pack rings, plastic strawberry containers, funnels, cookie cutters, mason-jar rings, rubber bands, pipe cleaners, strainers, even fly swatters can all make fine bubbles. Often items with many small openings will produce masses of fun bubbles. Your hands are another wonderful bubblemaker — especially if they are wet.

More Bubble Fun

Bubble Clusters: Put a small amount of bubble solution on a pie tin or cookie sheet. Blow into it with straws to create multiple bubbles in clusters.

Bubble Within a Bubble: Blow a bubble with a straw. Remove the straw from the bubble. Making sure the straw is wet, gently insert it into the top of the bubble, so it enters at a 45 degree angle. Blow gently to form another bubble.

 

This activity is adapted from Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World, which contains this and 300+ more fun family activities.

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

Origami Boat Race

My family has long been fans of making and sailing paper boats, an idea we got from our beloved book, H.A. Rey’s Curious George Rides a Bike. In the book, George secures a paper route, which leads him to make and sail a whole flotilla of folded-newspaper boats. Over the years, we’ve taken our origami boats down to a local creek, where they indeed sailed along once released, on the gently flowing spring stream. We were thrilled to learn that our local Mill Valley Public Library was teaching kids how to make their own origami boats (which they cleverly dipped in wax), before holding a boat race in the local creek.

What better way to celebrate Children’s Book Week than by making a version of Curious George’s paper boat and joining local children in releasing the boats into a creek for a race?

 

Follow these directions to make your own paper boat.

This activity was adapted from Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World, which contains 300+ fun family activities.

You might also like:

How To: Make a Paper Boat
Celebrating 100 Years of the Mill Valley Libary
Rich in Kindness, Poor in Money: All-of-a-Kind Family Children’s Book

 

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

How to: Make a Paper Boat

My family first got the idea to make a paper boat from our beloved book, H.A. Rey’s Curious George Rides a Bike, in which sweet and loveable George secures a paper route, which leads him to make and sail a whole flotilla of folded-newspaper boats. Wondering if a newspaper boat could really float, we got out some old newspaper, folded it into boats using the directions in Curious George, and took our boats down to a local creek, where they indeed sailed along once released, on a gently flowing spring stream. You can make your own boat, using any kind of paper.

You’ll need:

A sheet of any type of paper, roughly the same scale as an 8 ½” by 11” sheet
Adhesive tape, optional

Place the paper on a surface the long way, and fold it in half, top to bottom.

Fold the paper in half again.

Unfold the fold you just made.

With the creased side on top, fold both top corners in towards the center crease. This leaves a triangle shape, with a rectangular bar along the bottom.

Fold the bottom rectangles up on each side, creasing at the bottom of the triangle shape.

Place a thumb and forefinger on the inside of the shape, at the center of each triangle, and carefully, completely open out the shape from the middle.

Keep opening the shape until it flattens again into a perfect square. (Your two fingers should now be on opposite sides of the square.)

Lay the square like a diamond. The side pointing up should be the one that doesn’t have any other folds over it.

Fold each side in half, width-wise, bringing each bottom triangle up to the point at the top.

Place a thumb and forefinger into the center of each triangle, as before. This time, as you pull the bottom opening apart, use the other hand to stretch out the two top triangles from the other side of the figure, so that they become the bow and stern (back and front) of the boat.

Flatten the inner triangle slightly to create a sail.

If you like, you can line the bottom of the boat with adhesive tape, which may make it more waterproof and help it float longer.

Float your boat in a bathtub, creek or other body of water!

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman and Michael Lipman

Illustration by Margaret and H.A. Rey

Join me for more activities at the Family Book Festival at Jump Into a Book

 See boats in action in an Origami Boat Race!

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