I have yet to meet a child that doesn’t enjoy blowing bubbles! It is one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to keep the little ones busy! But this is just one perk, blowing bubbles for and with children has many benefits, for all sorts of milestones and early development skills! 

Bubbles are great for indoor and outdoor play and they can be enjoyed as a group activity or for some quiet play. A good idea is to keep a small bottle of bubbles in your handbag or nappy bag, they are light enough to carry around and are perfect to pull out when you are desperate to distract the kids and keep them constructively busy. At the same time, you can help them develop their little selves in many ways. 

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The Benefits Of Bubble Play  

 

Here is a list of how the simple game of blowing bubbles can assist a child in strengthening and developing certain skills, who knew!

• Visual Tracking. Because bubbles shine in the light (with beautiful colors) and because they float in the air slowly, they are excellent to use to stimulate sight, especially visual tracking. Visual skills are needed for learning and these skills don't come naturally, but need to be developed. Learning them from a very early age is said to have great benefits in school years. Babies from as young as 3 months can start to focus on objects. Blow some bubbles for your bubs so that they can focus, follow and track the moving "objects". 

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• Developing Gross Motor skills. Bubbles are great for encouraging movement, in small babies as well as older children. Let babies lie on their tummies, they will follow the bubbles and be encouraged to move their heads from side to side and up and down - a brilliant way to strengthen neck and core muscles as well as to introduce the practice of movement. In older children (crawling or walking), the activity of catching or popping bubbles teaches spacial awareness, the concept of starting and stopping a movements, it helps to perfect balance and it also improves muscle tone (reaching for bubbles, chasing them, ducking and diving - it's such good exercise)!  

• Developing Fine Motor Skills.Help your baby master the art of gripping, let him or here control and manipulate the wand - this might get messy, so best to do this activity outdoors. Children can learn to maneuver the fine wand in and out of the bottle of bubbles, move it around with their wrists and learn to hold it with a pencil or pincer-like grip. Usually toddlers are still choosing which hand they prefer, left hand or right hand, so encourage them to use both hands until the have a preference.  

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Speech and language development (hearing too). Teaching your toddler how to blow is a very important milestone, especially for speech development. It is one of the best ways to exercise jaw muscles and to prepare the mouth for pronunciation. You can also take advantage of the opportunity whilst blowing bubbles to teach young ones new words, in a fun way! For example, you can talk about the bubbles being round, wet, floating up, floating down etc.

 

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Oh What Fun!

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So you see, bubble time is not just a way to keep the kids busy - this simple activity has more power behind it than many realize, especially since children learn best when having fun too! If you would like to spice things up a bit to make the "bubble game" more interesting, then why not give one of these ideas a go:

1. Create an age appropriate obstacle course using items around your home. Blow bubbles over the items and encourage your child to pop bubbles by climbing on, under, around and over things. Makes the game a bit more challenging and excellent for engaging in spacial awareness. 

2. For kids that are a bit older, give them a fly swatter to try and hit the bubbles with. This is a fun way to learn the concept of "cause and effect". 

I would like to end of with a little bubble blowing song that my sister put together. It's something you can teach your kids, they can learn the actions too! Please find a video with the actions below:
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=XASGPHSQHKI

Much love - @sweetpea

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