Soap Bubbles: A Fun Way to Find the Inner Child Inside You

As summer is on the way and we start spending more time outdoors each day after a long winter, one activity that is guaranteed to bring fun into your day is blowing soap bubbles. Bubble blowing is a hobby that can be enjoyed by adults as well as children, and even a very young child who has not yet mastered the art of blowing bubbles can have fun catching and popping bubbles made by a parent or older sibling, or just watching.

When I am out of commercial bubble solution, something that happens quite often as my children and I really enjoy blowing those bubbles, I find that mixing liquid handwash (preferably containing glycerine) with water works best for me. An online search for soap bubbles when I was looking for a recipe for stronger bubbles gave me the following websites dedicated to bubble blowing.

Bubble Blowers is a website owned by a bubble collector (or rather bubble blower collector) where you can find information about character bubble blowers and interesting facts about soap bubbles. There is also a page listing some recipes for homemade bubble solution.

A great website that looks like it has been created by another bubble fanatic is Bubble Town. This website contains more interesting facts about soap bubbles as well as advice on blowing bigger and stronger bubbles.

The Art and Science of Bubbles is an informative and educational site about soap bubbles designed for children. It has an easy to follow bubble solution recipe, advice on blowing bigger and better soap bubbles and fun bubble-related games and experiences for children to try out. There is also a mini-book available to download and print on this site.

Wikipedia has an article explaining the physics of soap bubbles (did you know bubbles could freeze?), the history of bubbles as playthings and it also lists five soap bubble formulae that you can make at home. This would be an excellent resource for anyone doing a science project on bubbles.

How to Make Giant Soap Bubbles is an impressive video that gives you a recipe for making enormous bubbles; this one is aimed at adults rather than children but if big bubbles are your thing, enjoy watching this video.

Always supervise young children when allowing them to play with soap bubbles as the ingestion of soap bubbles solution may not be the most pleasurable experience. Also depending on its nature, the surface on which the bubbles are blown may get slippery and cause children to fall and hurt themselves. As a child I used to love blowing bubbles; I have rediscovered this fun activity through my children and yes, I admit it, I enjoy blowing the odd soap bubble sometimes even after my children have gone to bed. Soap bubbles are a great way to find the inner child inside you.