Ready, steady, blow!
You can add bubble games to every birthday party – regardless of the theme you choose – and it’ll always be a blast (I mean burst!).
Bubble-making is one of the coolest activities (even for grownups) and it’s probably also one of the cheapest to put together.
Bubble games set the scene for great photo opportunities. Just imagine the birthday child surrounded by a ring of guests, all holding bubble bottles and wands and blowing a cloud of bubbles, or each guest blowing a humungous bubble, or even a child inside a huge bubble. It’s the ultimate thank you card!
Here’s Maya (my daughter) just about to pop a Monster Bubble made with a clothes-hanger wand!
To prepare for the bubble games, you’ll need some tips on brewing the very best bubble mixtures. A mixture of plain old dishwashing liquid and water just doesn’t do the trick, but a few drops of Glycerin can make the difference between tiny, ordinary bubbles to humungous, colorful bubbles.
Take a look at some of the best homemade bubble recipes for your bubble games.
Now that you’ve got the potion brewing, you’ll need some bubble tools for your bubble games. There’s no need to look far. There’s a bubble-making device hiding in many of the objects lying around your house.
Bubble-Making Tools
First, though, take a look at your hands. They’re one of the best bubble making devices. Put your fingers together so they form an opening, dip your hands in a bowl of bubble solution to get a bubble film, and if you blow gently, you can make bubbles up to two feet in diameter.
Other tools for your bubble games can include string formed into a loop, a hanger bent into any shape, a tin can with both ends cut off, a straw, a piece of tubing, the plastic holder from a six-pack of soda, cookie cutters, you get the idea… Just about anything with a hole can be used to make bubbles. (The clothes-hanger wand is one of the best, and if you tightly wrap the hoop with cotton twine, it acts as a soap-holding wick and you get Hindenberg-size bubbles!
Bubble Games and Activities
One thing’s for sure, the kids’ll bubble with fun with these cool games.
First off, as an icebreaker, set up a bubble blowing area with lots of tools and a few containers of bubble solution. Make sure you’ve got extra bubble mixture for later bubble games and activities:
Bubble Hoop
Prepare a bucket-full of bubble solution and after it sets for at least a day (the longer the better), pour it into a small kiddie pool. Place a hula hoop into the pool and a small step stool in the middle of the hula hoop. Set a child on the stool and then lift the hula hoop up over the child, as you do this a giant bubble will form around the child. Have your camera ready to take pictures of the child in the bubble and don’t forget to videotape!! It’s AWESOME!
Bubble Freeze
Make sure there’s room in your freezer… Get the kids to blow bubbles on a paper plate and then, before the bubbles pop, put them in the freezer and you’ll all be amazed at how “cool” they come out.
Bubble Designs
Give each kid a piece of cardboard, construction paper or any other thick paper. Have a few containers with bubble solution and to each add a different water-based color (experiment first to see what works best with your bubble solution). Have one or more adults blow bubbles and tell the kids to try and catch the bubbles on their “canvas”. As the bubbles pop the paint splatters to make a cool design (which is a great artistic gift to take home)!
Bubble Popping
Choose three kids to be the bubble blowers. Set a time limit and have them blow as many bubbles as they can while the other kids race to pop the bubbles. You can also use the bubble machine for this activity.
Bubble Contest
Give the kids a few minutes to choose their bubble-blowing device from a box of bubble-blowing items you’ve arranged beforehand. You can also hand out bubble bottles so everyone is using the same tool. Now, let’s see who can blow the biggest bubble, the longest-lasting bubble. How about getting one bubble inside the other with the use of straws, and the tiniest bubble, etc.
Biggest Lungs
To measure their lung capacity, have your guests take a deep breath and slowly blow through a straw on the surface of a pan of solution, pulling the straw up as they blow (the stronger their lungs, the larger the bubble will be).
Bubble Float
Have two or three children blow as many bubbles with whatever tools they want. Make sure the bubble blowers blow UPWARDS. Then let all the other children blow on the bubbles lightly. The bubbles will fly up, left, right, or down. The point of the game is to see how long the children can keep the bubbles in the air. Once all the bubbles have blown away let the bubble blowers blow some more. It is a great game that kids will want to play over and over again!!
Kid Birthday Parties › Kid Activities › Soap Bubble Games
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Bubble Cloud Game
Get everyone standing in a circle with their bubble bottles and wands at hand. Choose the birthday child as the first to be in the center of the bubble ring. The kids have 30 seconds to blow bubbles at the birthday child while she twists, jumps, rolls and does everything possible to avert touching the bubbles.
When the time’s up, have another guest enter the ring and so on until everyone has had their turn. Make sure your camera is loaded before the game starts, as the photo opportunities here are awesome.
Cool Idea! This is a game we most likely will play when my son’s b-day comes up in May. My camera is already loaded!
Bubble Chain Bubble Party Game
Have a flat, smooth, (preferably laminated) surface, and smear it with the bubble solution. Have kids blow bubbles using the straws and try to make the biggest chain of bubbles! Start off on the prepared surface.
(make sure the kids are old enough not to suck the bubble solution in the straw, but to blow air out to create the bubbles).
Squirt’em Bubble Party Game
Get your bubbles blown as big as you want and simply give the kids squirt guns to shoot / pop them out of the air! Choose however you want to score, perhaps based upon how far across the yard they drift.
Careful, the closer kids are to the bubble source, the less fun it is.
Adults get a kick out of it as well. The really fun part is when a little breeze picks up and the kids chase the bubbles trying to squirt them.
*Just don’t let anyone use a lawn sprinkler; that’s a very effective way to cheat!
Control A Bubble
Bubbles are drawn to a static electricity charge!
If you blow a nice big plate of them or even just play with one on your hand you can “control” them: they will stretch and lean toward a balloon, ruler, or other charged object. This phenomenon could be worked into a magic show or a “pet trick”, etc.
You could explore with more than one object and pull the bubbles around in several directions. This could be a “bubble battle” or just fun.