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Bubble Time!

4/2/2020

What is one of the all-time favorite activities for children? BUBBLES!! As I was cleaning my garage last weekend, I came across a bucket of homemade GIANT Bubble, bubble solution. My first thought was I wonder if it still works? After all it was made over 2 years ago. To my surprise it did!

I originally made this bubble solution when I was teaching preschool in Pacifica. We were nonstop bubbles for a whole week. Each day we focused on a new bubble activity. I was originally planning to duplicate this process at home this week but living in this fluid time our plans changed. I did get one bubble activity in and I was hoping for a home run. But my best laid plans fell flat.

My goal was to create bubble paintings, though the end result was not as planned it was a good lesson in experimentation and process art. I used the following bubble paint recipe which I found on the Tinkerlab website, https://tinkerlab.com/bubble-paint-recipe/.

Bubble Painting Recipe:

2 Tablespoons tempera paint (liquid, not powdered)
2 Tablespoons dish soap. *I used dawn, please note the blue color of the soap altered the color of paint)
1 Tablespoon water
Straws
Paper
*Small bowls, I used paper

Directions for Bubble Painting:

Pour ingredients into a small bowl and combine.
Insert straw into bowl and blow.
Place paper on top of bubbles and you have a print.

My Process and Result:
Since I had never done this before I decided to do a small test before I presented the project to my kids. I gathered my supplies and made one bowl of blue bubble paint. The bubbles were slightly hard to create but it worked!! I was so excited, while my kids ate lunch, I prepared five different colors for them. This is when I discovered the blue dawn dish soap changes the color of red and pink paint, the colors became a little darker and slightly muddy. I set everything aside for our project later in the day.

Finally, we were finished with our schoolwork and it was time for art, the kids were excited! I used the same bowl of paint that I tested earlier to demonstrate the process except this time the bubbles would not stay formed. The kids decided they wanted to try anyways, and each grabbed a color. Unfortunately, the bubble paint did not work any better for them. The bubbles were still weak, but kids being kids they were having fun just trying to make the bubbles and creating a splatter mess. My fist though was maybe the soap broke down since it sat, I quickly made a fresh bowl of bubble paint thinking this will work. Nope, the bubbles were still not stable enough.

However, while I was bummed and frantically trying to fix the art to make it work my kids were having a great time creating their own versions of bubble art. I took a step back and thought “chill out Mom, art is about the process not the end result.”

As I looked over I saw my daughter using her straw as a paint brush and my son was blowing single bubbles out of the end of his straw and letting them drop onto his paper. They were figuring out what worked for them, it was time for me to just let them explore.

Trying her best to make bubbles we even tried different angles of the straw.

Gave up on the bubbles in the bowl and found a new method!

Sure did make a big mess.

During clean up my son and I started pouring paint into one bowl and after seeing how beautiful the paint looked we decided to attempt making bubbles one more time. Sure, enough we got bubbles!! So, the painting started all over again. I am thinking maybe there was just not enough paint mixture in our bowls. Unfortunately, we did not get the rainbow of colors that are shown in the bowl.