Have you made bubble foam yet? Bubble foam is a fantastic sensory activity made from just soap and water. In this post, you’ll learn more about making bubble foam for kids and how to use it in a bubble foam trucks?
What is bubble foam?
I love a good bandwagon moment and bubble foam is a bandwagon I’m glad I hopped on in 2015 and would like you to get on with me.
The best part of this bandwagon: you have all the supplies to make bubble foam today. All you need to do it get on board.
Bubble foam trucks is just one way to play with bubble foam – a sensory material that I first learned about from Fun at Home with Kids.
Bubble foam is amazing and it couldn’t be easier to make.
It’s created by whipping soap and water at high speed – and turning it into a meringue like substance… but it’s soap and definitely not delicious.
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The Materials
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- Bubble bath / body wash (make sure it’s tear free)
- Water
- Food coloring (optional)
- ALSO – construction trucks
I told you I was pretty sure you have these supplies and my gut feeling is, I was right.
The biggest urge I can give you with this recipe is to make sure you are using tear free soap if working with kids. I made this once with dish soap. It was awesome… until it got in my toddler’s eyes. Tear free. Please.
The Recipe
The magic of bubble foam is a 2:1 ratio, water to soap.
For this bubble foam trucks activity, I used 1/2 cup water with 1/4 cup of soap for each color. I added in a few drops of food coloring to make it just a little more special.
Then: You whip it.
Grab a hand mixer or blender and start whipping. You want to whip it into “stiff peaks” – you’ll know when you get there. In the blender, this happens in under a minute. It takes a little longer for the hand mixer (but that’s what I personally prefer to use).
How to turn bubble foam into bubble foam trucks
I dumped two batches of bubble foam into our favorite storage container (a 28 quart bin from Target) and added in a bunch of construction trucks.
Construction trucks just have a way of being perfect for sensory bins. They invite so much playing.
My kids (age 5, 3, 20 months) pushed their bubble foam up and down the bin, working together to build with the bubble foam.
What can kids learn with bubble foam trucks?
Play can just be for play’s sake. After all, we know kids learn best through play so any act of playing is an act of learning. But… it is fun to consider what all a child is learning and developing when they are in a play situation.
In bubble foam trucks, my kids were learning:
- Cooperation: working together to share a sensory bin
- Sensory skills: exploring the consistency of soap and water
- Imaginary play: developing story line for the trucks
- Motor planning: deciding how to move the trucks through the bubbles and making that come to life
Other ways to use bubble foam
Bubble foam is one of those timeless activities and bubble foam trucks is not the only way to use it. This is an ageless and timeless sensory material with so many possibilities!
Here are some great ways to play with bubble foam:
Frequently Asked Questions
Nope! Food coloring is water soluble – and heavily diluted in this activity.
Food coloring will rinse of little hands (if any gets on) and come out of clothing easily (just set the clothing is cold water for a few hours).
You don’t want to make it ahead of time or try to store it, but you can whip it back up into stiff peaks during play. Bubble foam usually last about 45 minutes. When it starts to go back to a liquid, I grab my hand mixer and give it a refresh.
Bubble foam is not taste safe so use it wisely with kids who may mouth or try and eat it. You may want to wait until your child is out of the “licks everything” phase of toddlerhood. From there, the sky is the limit. The tweens in my neighborhood beg for bubble foam so you know it has mass appeal.
Susie Allison, M. Ed
Owner, Creator
Susie Allison is the creator of Busy Toddler and has more than 2.3 million followers on Instagram. A former teacher and early childhood education advocate, Susie has written two home learning curricula, Playing Preschool and Branches. Her parenting book “Busy Toddler’s Guide to Actual Parenting” is available on Amazon.
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Anya says
My two year old loved this one! Thank you.