As I mentioned in my last post, I regard blowing bubbles with the utmost affection.
Somehow that activity speaks to my soul.
On Pinterest, I’ve seen where people made bubble ‘snakes.’
Snakes!?!
I immediately checked them out. Fun!
Of course, I wanted my grandchildren to experience making soap snakes.
Totally reasonable, right?
That’s every grandmother’s dream, isn’t it?
I’m so glad you agree.
So. are you ready for snakey fun? (Is snakey a real word???)
All you need is an empty water bottle, a sock (obviously a clean one), and your bubble solution.
Cut the bottom off the water bottle. Slip the stocking over the end. (I went to my local dollar store and bought some socks to use.) Put a rubber around the sock so it won’t come off the bottle.
Then, dip the sock in the bubble solution and blow.
I’ve also seen around the web ‘rainbow’ bubbles. Gotta let my granddaughter experience that, too.
Just squeeze drops of various colors of food coloring on the sock and blow.
Because of the wind (and because the photographer — who happened to be Grandpa — kept getting side-tracked), we didn’t get good pictures of the rainbow bubbles. The main color in the pictures that I got was red. I do believe you need more than one color to make a rainbow…
You’ll recall I did the bubbles-through-a-straw activity two times with grandkids. I also did the bubble snake both times.
My little two-year-old grandson blowing his ‘snake.’
These were the only two pictures I got of the soap snakes the second time around. And it wasn’t because Grandpa was a sidetracked photographer. I’ll explain why in a moment…
Just like with the blowing-bubbles-through-a-straw experience, I learned a lot when we made the bubble snakes and the rainbow bubbles. Boy, howdy did I learn things.
Let me pause for a moment to share some thoughts. The sites that I viewed about the bubble snakes and the rainbow bubbles mostly posted pictures. There were very few directions. They didn’t offer much information about what went well and what didn’t.
Because of that, I want to share the what-didn’t-go-so-good so that you, Dear Reader, can learn from my mistakes experience have a good time when you try this activity.
When doing the bubble rainbow, have your grandchildren wear old clothes in case they get food coloring on their clothes. Food coloring might stain.
Blowing the bubble snake was hard for my granddaughter. There were two main reasons. One was because the water bottle was flimsy. It kept collapsing.
The second time I did this activity with her, I got small individual bottles of pop. Those bottles were much sturdier and were much better. So, make sure your bottles are not flimsy.
The other reason was because the first time I just cut off the bottom of the bottle. My little granddaughter had to blow and blow — and almost hyperventilate — to get the bubbles to come out.
The second time we made snake bubbles, I cut the bottle so there was about an inch past where neck widened out to the full bottle size. Since the length was significantly shorter, my grandkiddos didn’t have to blow so hard. Having a short bottle made it MUCH easier for them.
But the BIGGEST, most IMPORTANT LESSON that I learned was that when doing the bubble snake activity, there should be one person taking pictures and one person supervising the bubble blowing activity. In fact, any time a young grandchild is doing bubbles, an adult should be paying attention at all times to him.
Lemme tell you what happened.
I was busy snapping pictures. My attention was more on my camera and taking pictures than on my little grandchildren.
Do you know what two-year-old grandchildren do with a bubble blowing gizmo that’s made out of a bottle? Sometimes instead of blowing out, he swallows. Swallowing is a natural instinct for toddlers when they have a bottle in their mouth.
Do you know how many tears a two-year old cries when he swallows soap? Not as many as the grandma sheds, I can tell you!
The directions on the soap bottle said if someone swallowed the soap that they should drink a glass of water to dilute the ingested soap.
My sweet little Elliot didn’t want to drink ANYTHING. He was extremely afraid of drinking. (And that’s a huge understatement.) He cried. He snuggled with his mother. And cried. Eventually, she coaxed him into eating a cracker. And then finally, FINALLY to drink some milk.
Luckily, he was okay. But, neither of us liked what happened. (I imagine that Elliot’s mother wasn’t pleased either. But being the sweet person that she is, she didn’t chastise me at all.)
So, PLEASE make sure someone supervises the little grandkiddos if you are the person behind the camera. Your grandchildren’s digestive tract will thank you.
