Blowing bubbles is so much fun! Almost all of my kids love this activity. Now that the air is beginning to warm a bit, the bubbles are once again being added to the activity roster.
While just blowing bubbles is a fun activity, I prefer to turn bubble time into learning time. It’s really simple to do, and the kids don’t even realize they’re learning.
Here are five of our favorite bubble activities for emerging readers.
For each activity, you will need some bubbles. I like to buy them in bulk and then refill the smaller, easier to carry bottles from the big one.
You don’t want the big one to dump on your living room floor…so make sure it’s kept up out of reach from curious toddlers, okay?
Ready to play with bubbles?
Let’s get started!
1. Bubble Rhyme Time
This game will definitely help you reach your daily step goal! You’ll want to grab a small bottle of bubbles and a bubble wand before you start.
Have your kids run around the yard, while you run after them. Your goal is to get a bubble to pop on a child. Each time you’re successful, you get to give that child a word.
For a fun twist, pass the bubble wand to one of the kids and let them be it for a bit.
Here are some good words for beginning rhymers. These each have plenty of words that end the same:
- Star
- Ball
- cat
- bee
- clock
- big
They must respond with a rhyming word as quickly as they can. , As your kids run around the yard, run after them as you blow bubbles. When one of your bubbles hits someone, give them a word.
They have to come up with a rhyming word. If desired, you can also pass off the bubble wand.
2. Sight Word Bubbles
This one takes a bit of prep, but it’s a lot of fun! Using a sharpie, write sight words on several index cards.
Put these down on the grass, randomly.
Hand the bubble wand to your child, and let them try to blow bubbles onto a card. Whenever a bubble lands on a word, have the child read that word.
They can either collect the cards as they go, or pick them up after reading. This game is easily adaptable for older kids too; just add harder words to your cards.
Pick up the cards when you’re done, and set them out to dry. You can reuse them several times.
3. ABC Bubble Run
For this game, we use our bubble machine. It blows bubbles a lot faster than we can with wands.
That’s the machine we have, but any style should work just fine!
Grab the bubble and your machine and head outside. You want to pour just a small amount of bubble solution into your machine. When the kids are ready, turn the machine on.
The goal is for the kids to sing the ABC song as many times as possible before the bubbles stop blowing. So they go from A-Z, and then start over again.
Once the bubbles stop, they have to stop singing. Since nobody knows when the machine will stop, it’s a fun way to practice the ABCs at a speedy tempo.
4. Vocabulary Practice
Here’s one to help your emerging readers build their vocabularies. It’s another one where we use a bubble machine, but you can easily substitute a bottle of bubbles and a wand.
Once they start coming out, ask your kids to describe them. Your kids will be listing adjectives, and thinking of synonyms as they expand their vocabulary.
Here are some words to get you started:
- sparkly
- round
- wet
- glistening
- sticky
- gliding
- clear
- tiny
- floating
- small
- translucent
There are many ways to describe these floating balls of soapy water!
5. Pop the Sounds
You can model sounding out words as you pop bubbles. This skill is essential for emerging readers!
Blow a bunch of bubbles, and say a short-vowel, three-letter word, like cat. Say the “c” sound and pop a bubble. Then say the “a” sound and pop another one. Ask your child what comes at the end of the word “cat.” Have your child say the “t” sound and pop a bubble.
You’ll have to go quickly to get all three sounds in before the bubbles run out. Then, you can pop a final bubble and say “c, a, t, cat”
Do it again with another word, except have your child say the sounds and pop the bubbles this time.
Bubble Learning Is Fun!
My kids have so much fun playing with bubbles they don’t even realize they’re learning. While some of them may not like sitting and practicing letters and sounds on a worksheet, they’ll all eagerly play bubble games with me.
And for even more bubble fun, ask your kids to:
- Count bubbles
- Race around to pop as many as possible in 1 minutes
- Sing songs while the bubbles are in the air and stop when they’re not
- Practice catching bubbles on their wand
- Compare the size of bubbles
- Pretend to be a bubble floating through space
Bubbles are so much fun!
