Community Voices for Health

By: Kathleen Blandin

With the weather nice and your little rascal wanting to be outdoors, sometimes you have to get creative when the regular good ol’ outdoor activities are not doing the job.

Your restless and bored pal needs some inspiration and you are their key to imagination! With that in mind, bubbles are a kid’s best friend and below are some fun, creative and budget friendly items to make blowing bubbles a continuous fun day!

Spatula

This item has the grooves just like a wand but is bigger and sturdier. This allows them to feel the wind and resistance through their swing. The flat top of the spatula allows the same feel and incline up to the handle as a wand, so if you have more than one child around then there will no longer be fights over the original bubble wand.

Paper Roll

This one will get soggy after some play but in the mean time will offer lots of intrigue. The opening is big enough that they can put their mouth up to the opening and blow giant bubbles from the other end. For this, you could choose between a shorter toilet paper roll or longer paper towel roll. Another take on this item is for them to do a back and forth motion or run with the roll for the wind to blow the bubbles out one end. This will leave them occupied and burning off steam (the best thing about outside play—a good night’s rest!)

Styrofoam Cup

With this one it will be a little more of a process and patience. You will want to remove the bottom part of the cup (the part that would sit flush with the table). Keep in mind that this is Styrofoam and you will have to do this carefully. Once that is done you can grab some tape and place it in different arrays across the bigger opening (the part you would drink from). You have now made your little one a speaker phone AND a crazy cool bubble maker that will create different sizes for them to enjoy in more ways than one!

Straws

Everyone has plastic straws handy in their cupboard; while you sometimes wonder when you will ever truly deplete the giant wad of straws, I have something to tell you—think no more! Grab a child-size hand full of those straws and tape them together to make a giant bunch. You have now created a honeycomb of tiny bubble makers! Just like the paper roll you will guide your pal to blow into one side and see bubbles galore be made on the other! For more fun, you can add different shapes of straws together for an even more exciting time!

Paper/Styrofoam Plate

With a paper plate center cut out, tape a popsicle stick or even a long thin stick from outside as a wand handle to the inclined edge. If the plate is on the large size, you may need to find a bigger “tray” and in this case a cookie sheet could do the job! Simply pour a thin layer of bubbles into a cookie tray and you now have a giant bubble tray for even the largest bubble wand makers you can think of!

If you have a warm weather fun idea and would like to share it please put it in the comments below! The Signature Mom’s Blog is always eager to hear from their readers about exciting things to inspire others!