Hi, I am Beth Wise with Scribbler's Ink, an educational resource company in Orlando, Florida. We've been talking all day about great activities for summer fun with children. It's quite a challenge when you have small children at home during the summer time. So I'm going to bring some activities to you that show you some really fun things to do with children but also have an educational twist. So the next thing we're going to do is make some bubbles, but I'm not talking about just the small kind of bubbles, I want you to envision this, the kids are inside a bubble that completely encapsulates them. We're talking about giant bubble fun right now, and these are the materials that we need. We're going to go outside for this activity and we're going to use a small inflatable child's pool. One of the reasons we're doing is for safety. With the small children, we do want to do activities that are fun and can be a little bit rambunctious, anywhere near water that's deep.
So we're going to be using a small inflatable child's pool, very small, and the only requirement is, is that it's large enough to hold a hula hoop which is our next material, we need at least one hula hoop for this activity.
So we're going to use a small children's wading pool, we're going to use a hula hoop, and then we need to make the soap. So we're going to make our soap with 32 ounces of liquid kitchen soap and this time we want to make sure that our bubbles get really hard and so hard, that they are firm, they are firm enough that we can actually lift them up over the children. So we're going to use glycerin and I've got eight ounces of glycerin.
If you're filling your pool with your tap water from the outside hose, you may need, depending on what kind of water you have, a little more soap or little more glycerin you'll have to experiment with that. Some people prefer to use distilled water but since we're just doing outdoor fun at home, I'm going to use my hose water. But just know that you may have to alter the amount of soap or glycerin that you have. A pool, a hula hoop, your soap, your glycerin, and then we need some tools in the pool, to make the bubbles.
One of the bubble makers is actually going to be our hula hoop, but when you're in the pool, this little kiddie pool with the children, just go into your kitchen and find kitchen tools, I've got a potato masher, I've got a mixer, and this actually is a Taco maker, which just makes great bubbles. But any kind of utensils from your kitchen that have some kind of enclosed areas in them will be great for bubbles. So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to fill our pool with water. Now we've taken ours outside and we have just run, like I said, our hose, we are just using the plain old water from inside, and you only need a couple of inches, say four inches of water in there. If you have too much water in the pool, you're going to have to adjust your soap and glycerin again. So we've got just a couple of inches of water in the pool, and then we mix our soap, and we need all 32 ounces of the soap, and we need all eight ounces of the glycerin and after you mix some in the pool, you just want to move your hand in a circle you want to mix all of the soaps and glycerins together, but you don't want to really mix it up really hard because then the bubbles are going to be going every place, you just want to get them stirred up.
So we're going to fill about four inches of water, put our soap and our glycerin, mix it and then, we're ready for the fun. Now we add the kids, so we put our hula hoop in the pool, set it all the way down, and tell the hula hoop as covered with soap and then very gently, you are trying not to break the surface of the bubble, so keep your hands on the outside of the hoop, very gently, lift the hula hoop out of the soap, and it will make a giant bubble.
Then for more fun, have a child stand or sit in the middle of your hula hoop and the soapy water, and again, lift up your soap, lift up your hoop with the soap and lift the bubble all the way over the top of the child, so they are totally encapsulated in the bubble.
You will have a lot of laughter. It's great fun. Then to go on let the kids make their own bubbles, let them lift the hula hoop over each other, making the large bubbles, and then let them take the utensils, switch them around in a soapy water, and blow the soap out, and you'll see all kinds of different shapes of bubbles and sizes. Great fun for the pool.
Now, well we have still got our soapy water, our now clean kids and they are wet, we're going to do another activity in the same kiddie pool, this time though, we're going to be doing a little twist on it, and we're going to be playing a game called 'Leap Frog with a Splash'.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services