Week One - Summer - Science Fun

Today's activity is really fun...my little man loved it, and the art work created is actually very cool.

Weird Science Kids is a great place to get ideas to show kids how the world around them works. The one I chose for summer (because it can be customized) is Bubble Prints.

You will need paint, water, dish soap, paper (all of the supplies are found if you follow the link). Weird Science Kids gives you very specific ingredients, but we used regular water, and bowls and everything worked fine.

Little Man's favorite part was getting to blow into the bubble solution to create the bubbles that will ultimately make the print. This is the part I was nervous about, because you want to make sure that they do not drink the paint - but it proved not to be an issue. He was so excited about being allowed to blow into something with a straw that it never came up.

Image from About.com

The pictures that we created were very cool to look at - and could be used multiples ways, cards, wrapping paper, art for a play room, etc.

Here are my hints to make this fun and educational:

1. Use colors associated with summer: oranges, yellows, reds, bright green, hot pink - talk to your child about why these colors remind us of summer. Ask them what colors they think of when they think of summer. (Note: If you are going to use this as a gift for others, use complimenting colors)

2. Keep some of the bubble solution for bubble blowing fun - don't add paint. This will give them something to do when they tire of the more directed experiment. Talk about the different ways you make bubbles - wands, using your hands in the tub, straws and what they have in common (soap, air, etc.)

What do you see?

3.  Once you have created your bubble art - talk about what it looks like to you (think of looking at the clouds). What does it look like to your little one - why?

4. The point of bubble prints is that the randomness makes it beautiful - but try to direct the bubbles to make a specific object - we tried a bird. This does not work very well - but we had a great time talking about how we would dip the paper to make the components of a bird (beak, belly, body, feet, etc). Then once it didn't work we tried to draw the bird onto the picture. I made it very silly as we tried to find the "beak" and others and see what our silly bird looked like. Little man laughed a bunch.

Tomorrow we have reached the end of week one - I will finally give you that sight word review and give some more books, and movies and shows that you could enjoy as a family over the weekend to keep talking about Summer. Have fun!