Children
LOVE Bubbles &
They Are Good for Them Too!
Helping children experience fun, engaging activities is important.
Not only does it keep them happy, creating positive bonds between the child
and the family, it also encourages healthy development. In the
early
years, providing a variety of stimulations actually encourages the
development of the brain. No wonder bubble-blowers are one of the
world's oldest and most popular toys.
Language is a complex set of behaviors. It involves much more than
learning words and their meaning. A child needs to have the
psycho-motor skills to be ready to learn languages. Playing with
bubbles encourages a variety of opportunities to coordinate breathing and
movements with the mouth and tongue. It also allows children to
practice eye-hand coordination as they point at the bubbles and try to catch
them.
Best of all - there is really nothing to explain. Most children
will pick up bubble blowing by watching someone else blow a few good
bubbles. They naturally engage themselves, allowing the fun and
excitement to guide their curiosity and learning. Look at how much
fun Nina, the girl featured in the video above, is having! The
wonder, awe, and stimulation that bubbles provide represent an exciting
way to help your child. That is why bubbles are part of Wisconsin
Council on Children and Family's
Better Badger
Baby Bus Tour!
Blowing Bubbles May Help. A technique similar to the one
mothers use to cope with labor pain may help children cope with the pain of
shots, according to a recent study from Ohio State University. Click
HERE to read more."
Help Children Blow Away Anger. You can teach your child
strategies for coping with anger that can defuse today’s temper tantrums and
manage stress throughout his or her life. Ignore the tantrums while your
child learns these new skills (see below). Walk away, vacuum the carpet,
load the dishwasher. Tantrums won’t escalate if you don’t react to them. Click
HERE to read
more.
Kids Who Blow Bubbles Find Language Is Child's Play. "oungsters who can lick their lips,
blow bubbles and pretend that a building block is a car are most likely to
find learning language easy, according to a new study funded by the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC). Psychologists at Lancaster University,
led by Dr Katie Alcock, found strong links between these movement, or motor
and thinking, or cognitive, skills and children's language abilities." Click
HERE to read more.
Moving Around: How to Support Your Child's Gross-Motor Development.
Everyday ways you can help your child develop big-muscle movement, from ages
2 to 5, including chasing bubbles. If you have a typically developing
toddler or preschooler in the house, you're probably on the move most of the
time... trying to keep up with the small person who whizzes by you, ready to
climb anything that goes up, jump on anything that may (or may not) support
her weight, open anything that is closed, run to anything that looks fun,
and ride on anything with wheels. Click
HERE to read
more.
More Bubbles, Fewer Troubles for Children's Ears. Blowing
bubbles is fun for most kids, but for many indigenous children it's also a
way of preventing a debilitating ear infection. One in three
indigenous children suffers from chronic otitus media - or glue ear - from
birth to age nine. In the non-indigenous population, the figure is one
in 10. Click
HERE to read
more.
Toddlers Who Blow Bubbles Learn To Speak Earlier. Toddlers who
blow bubbles and lick their lips seem to learn how to acquire language
earlier than babies who don't, say researchers from Lancaster University,
UK. They found a clear link between a toddler's ability to carry out complex
mouth movements with the ability to acquire and develop language. Click
HERE to read
more.
What the Blogs Are Saying. By
Technorati, the
authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs. This link will
give you an updated list on blogs that are featuring child development. Click
HERE to read
more.
No spill containers . . . no worry about
spilling anything! The bubbles can be left out for the children
to play with as often as they want.
Blow lots of bubbles. This helps
with all sorts of muscles in your mouth for speech development for forming
words and articulation.
Pop a bubble. Reaching all sorts
of positions helps with muscle coordination and eye/hand coordination.
Isolate that finger. Use the
pointer finger to pop the bubble. Now pop the bubble on different body
parts while you label them. This helps with language, cognitive and
sensory development.
Color bubbles. Add some food
coloring and blow the bubbles onto some paper and make bubble prints.
Frozen bubbles. Take the bubbles
outside in the winter and blow. Watch the bubbles freeze in mid-air.
Tons of bubbles. Hold the wand in
front of a fan. Millions of bubbles will come out. (Parents, you must be
around for this one.)
Jump on a bubble. Blow the bubbles
on a carpet. Let the children jump to pop them. This is great for large
motor muscle development.
Catch a bubble. If your hands are
wet, you can catch and hold a bubble. You can also catch a bubble with
another bubble.
All ages entertainment. Bubble can
entertain and bring all ages of people together. Share with grandparents
and babies . . . .
Bubbles are a gas trapped inside a liquid - in this case, air trapped in
a soapy solution that forms a film. The air in bubbles pushes
against the surrounding liquid film. The air pushes the film with the
same pressure at each point. The liquid film holds the bubble
together.
The surface tension of the film is the same at each point. Because
the pressure of the air pushing out and the film holding it in is equal at
all points, bubbles are always round. Bubbles represents an "equillibrium"
between the air trapped inside and the surface tension of the outer film.
Scientists call bubbles "minimal surface structures." Bubbles
always hold the gas or liquid inside of them with the least possible surface
area. The geometric form with the least surface area for any given volume is
always a sphere. Other shapes, like boxes, pyramids, and tubes have a
more surface area.
Bubble solutions are usually made of water, soap and glycerine. By
itself, water is not "bendable" enough to blow bubbles with. Adding
soap makes the water more bendable. The glycerine also helps and makes
the solution "wetter" so that it does not dry out as fast. A soap and
glycerine solution, without water, is too thick to blow big bubbles with.
The water is needed to thin the solution. Instead of glycerine, one
can add light corn syrup, though the bubbles may not be as stable.
Bubbles pop when they are touched or when the film just starts to dry,
When a bubble is touched by something dry, it looses moisture. Bubbles
will even dry as they are exposed to the air. Drying causes the film
to shrink. Eventually, the equilibrium between the air inside and the
film's surface tension is broken. The air pushes out with the same
force while the film looses some of its surface tension. The result is
the bubble pops.
A bubble actually does not have any color, but it reflects and refracts
light from both the inner and outer surface of the bubble. If you
carefully look at a bubble, you will see colors like a rainbow. When
light hits the surface of a bubble, some of the light is reflected back to a
viewer's eye from the outer surface and part of the light is reflected from
the inner surface. Because the outer surface is few millionths of an
inch close than the inner surface, the two waves of light bounce back and
interfere with each other.
Waves, like light, can reinforce each other, making the color is more
intense. Bubbles with thick films show the most color. Waves,
like light, can also cancel each other out, and then we see almost no color.
As a bubble wall gets thinner, because the solution is weak, drying out, or
gravity has pulled its mass to the bottom, the distance between the inner
surface and the outer surface of the bubble becomes less. Eventually,
the two reflected waves of light start to coincide and cancel each other
out. Then bubbles lose their color, becoming nearly invisible.
Sure, its convenient to buy bubble solution, buy you
can make your own. If children are old enough, have them help.
Recipes are a great way to introduce and reinforce math concepts like
fractions. Try making different bubble solutions and "test" to see
which ones work best. Different conditions, such as humidity and air
pressure affect bubbles, so there is not one "best" solution for every
situation.
Basic Bubbles I
2/3 cup Joy dishwashing soap
1 gallon water
2 to 3 tablespoons of glycerine (available at
pharmacy / chemical supply house)
Basic Bubbles II
1/2 cup Dawn liquid dish soap
1/2 gallon water
3 Tbls glycerine (available at pharmacy / chemical
supply house)
Basic Bubbles III
1 cup Ultra Ivory Blue
12 cups water
3/4 Tablespoon glycerine (available at pharmacy
/ chemical supply house)
No Tears Bubbles I
1/4 cup no-tears baby shampoo
3/4 cup water
3 tablespoons light corn syrup (Karo is
popular brand)
No Tears Bubbles II
2 Cups no-tears baby shampoo
6 cups water
1cup Light Corn Syrup (Karo is popular
brand)
"Heavy Duty", Long Lasting
Bubbles
1/3 cup commercial bubble solution (i.e.
Wonder Bubbles)
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup glycerin (Note: this is a
thicker, "wetter" solution)
Soft water makes the best bubbles.
If you don't have a water-softener, use distilled water to
make bubble solution. Well water, hard water, well
water, and any water containing minerals and iron is bad for
bubbles.
Adding glycerin to your bubble mix
keeps them from drying out quickly, which pops bubbles.
Glycerin can be found in your local pharmacy - it can be
fairly expensive. An easier-to-find, less
expensive substitute is white Karo Syrup, available at the
grocery store.
Let bubble solution "rest."
Make your bubble solution in advance and store it overnight
in the refrigerator before blowing bubbles.
Skim off any suds or foam from
surface of bubble mixture before making bubbles. Be
careful not to splash the wand around in the bubble solution
-- suds and foam are "bubble-busters".
Dryness is the "anti-bubble."
Touching a bubble with anything dry will immediately pop it.
Make sure the bubble wand, hands, and anything bubble may
touch is wet.
Soak bubble wands and other
bubble-makers in the bubble solution a few minutes prior to
using.
The best days to blow bubbles are
overcast, cool and humid. These are ideal weather
conditions for blowing bubbles. On hot, dry or windy
days, try to find a shady spot out of the wind.
Don't blow too hard! Many small
bubbles instead of one big one means there is too much air
pressure.
After blowing a big bubble, use a
quick twist of the wrist to seal it and send it floating off
the wand or bubble tool.
Try "throwing" bubbles instead of
blowing bubbles. Move the wand in a slow fluid motion.
Experiment, different wands and bubble tools work better for
throwing instead of blowing.
Most People in a Bubble. On
March 27, 2006, Sam Heath -- known as "Sam Sam the Bubble Man" -- set
the Guinness World Record for most people inside a single bubble when he
enclosed 19 boys and girls over 5 feet tall inside a giant bubble at
Chessington World of Adventures outside London in Surrey, UK. He used a
152 cm circular wooden platform for the children to stand on, surrounded
by a 25cm gap to hold the bubble solution.
Largest Free-Floating Soap Bubble.
On October 9, 2005, John Erck of XTREME Bubbles blew the Guinness
World Record largest free-floating soap bubble, 105.4 cubic feet (2.98
cubic meters) in size. If the bubble were filled with water, it would
hold 788 gallons and weigh 3.2 tons. To give you another idea of its
size, 13,627 baseballs would fit inside of it.
Most People Simultaneously Blowing
Bubbles. On May 16, 1999, prior to West Ham United F.C.'s
home Premier League soccer fixture against Middlesbrough F.C. at the
Boleyn Ground, Upton Park, London, a total of 23,680 people in the
stadium blew bubbles for a minute. Read about it at the Guinness
World Records website. (Previous record holder was the University of Guelph with 2,000 people in 1999.)
Largest Bubble Wall.
Fan Yang of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada created a 156-foot-long
and 13-foot-high, bubble wall on August 11, 1997, at the Kingdome
Pavilion in Seattle, Washington. The 4,000 square feet of bubble stayed
up for 5 to 10 seconds.
Children
LOVE Bubbles &
©2006
William P. Breitsprecher &