Color Bubble Prints Math Activity

It's no mystery: Kids love bubbles. But did you know that you can use bubbles to explore colors with your child? Talk about a bubbly brainy bonus!
What you need:

• Several bottles of bubble solution
• Bubble wands
• Large sheets of white paper
• Bottles of food coloring
• Old clothes or a smock
• Pie plate or tins
• Straws

How to do it:

• Put on your smocks or old play clothes and head outside. This activity can get messy ;-)
• Mix ¾ teaspoon of food coloring into each bottle of bubble solution.
• Shake or stir the solution until it is well mixed.

For younger children:
- Tape the sheet of paper to an outdoor table or fence.
- Have your child dip the wand into a bubble bottle and blow some bubbles. (You may need to help blow!)
- Help him aim the bubbles toward the paper.
- When the bubbles hit the paper, they'll pop, making beautiful and colorful circular patterns.
- Point out the various colors and shapes in your bubblicious artwork!

For older children:
- Pour the solution onto a pie plate or tin.
- Put one end of the straw into your mouth and the other end into the bubble solution.
- Blow a pile of bubbles. Keep blowing until your pile is high and spilling over the pie plate.
- Remove the straw and quickly put the white paper on top of the bubble pile, then lift the paper off.
- Add more colors to your sheet of paper and overlap the bubble prints to see what new colors you can create.
- For multicolored bubbles, put two different colored bubble solutions onto a pie plate but don't mix them. Blow into the bubble solutions and see what happens to the bubbles!
Brain Building Bonus: Look at the shape(s) of the bubbles you are creating. A bubble is usually a sphere shape, but what happens when you stack bubbles? (HINT: When bubbles meet, they merge walls. Get enough bubbles together and you'll be able to create hexagons in your bubble pile! How's that for geometry?) How this builds brains: This activity is not only a surefire kid-pleaser, but it allows your child to explore different colors, learn the names of the colors and experience the joy of playing with color. So go and have some soaper (er, super) duper bubble fun!
Get more brain-building activities for your kid! Check out our Brain Building Boot Camp with Dr. Christine Ricci.