Bubble Foam Water Play

This soap bubble foam recipe mixes soap and water with cornstarch to create foam that has a great texture. 

We love sensory play that we can take outside! This soap foam has a really great texture and is perfect for playing with in the garden on a warm day! I like to use corn flour to thicken this up a bit. Add in a few objects/animals and you’ve got tons of pretend and creative, messy play!

What you Need To Make the Soap Foam:

1/4 cup of warm water

2 tbsp dish soap

2 tbsp cornstarch (or corn flour)

food coloring or liquid watercolors

blender (or hand mixer)

animals/objects to add

Tuff spot or bucket

Directions:

In the blender, add the water, dish soap, cornstarch and food coloring. Blend on high speed until stiff peaks form. Depending on the type of soap etc, you may need to adjust measurements. The cornstarch is what helps stiffen it up, so if it is too watery, add more cornstarch and dish soap.

Once you have your foam, pop it into the tuff tray and let your children go crazy! I like to fill the tuff tray up with some water first, and then layer the foam on the top. This creates a different texture for your little ones to explore! For an added extra, you can add things to your tuff spot to enhance the experiance even more. toy animals, bath toys, water beads (if your child wont eat them) pots and pans ect.

You can literally add anything to make an array of themes;

By adding brown food colouring, some dinosaur toys and you’ve got yourself a muddy swamp.

Add some green food colouring and some wild animals, fake leaves and you’ve got yourself a jungle theme!

Blue food colouring and sea creatures creates a ocean themed tray.

For slightly older children, you could make a few different coloured batches of foam and have them set out separately. Get your child to explore the colours by mixing them together and seeing what colours make what when mixed together.

The possibilities are endless!

Time to Play!

I decided to fill the tuff spot with water and add food colouring to the water, keeping the bubbles/foam white. As I said above, the contrast in textures is great for your little ones. I also had music playing in the background, enhancing the sensory experience that little bit more. Molly LOVED this activity. It did not take her long to get completely soaked. She would pick up a handful of bubbles, blow them so they went everywhere and then giggle the sweetest giggle. She also covered the dog in bubbles – He was not so impressed.

I managed to find a pack of plastic sea creatures from the charity shop a while a go, but had never found a use for them. Until now that is. I decided to just chuck them in last minute. Molly spent ages searching for them, then bring me each one and wait for me to tell her what it was. She would try to repeat what I’d said, laugh, and then run back to the tray to find another animal to bring to me.

Activities like this are fantastic for developing a tiny humans fine motor skills. Fine motor skills involve the use of the smaller muscles of the body. Skills such as pinching and grasping improve these muscles in children.

She then moved on from the animals and started to play with the whisk, scoops and pots. Molly was scooping and pouring water, filling up and emptying containers in a multitude of different ways. Refining her motor skills as well has her hand & eye coordination in the process without even knowing it. That’s the beauty of play. You can set up activities to help a child’s development, without them knowing. To them its fun, and that’s what its all about. Fun. So much so that Molly decided she wanted to stand in the bowl.

Molly spent a good hour, if not more playing with this set up. Pouring water onto the dogs, running around with a whisk in her hand and getting completly soaked. The activity was left out for the entire day so she could come and go as she pleased, which she did. Clean up at the end of the day was super easy. The beautiful thing about doing activities outdoors means you can just tip it out, and hose it down. Molly just needed drying off. No mess no fuss. I feel this is going to be a go to activity for us to do over the summer. I can’t wait to try out some different variations too!

What’s your favourite water table activity?