ByChristie Burnett
POP! There is something just so magical about bubbles and your kids will absolutely LOVE this bubble painting activity.
You only need a few simple supplies to try this amazing bubble art for kids.
Bubble painting is a fun and easy art activity that kids of all ages will love!
It’s a great outdoor art activity and a perfect summer activity for creative kids, and if you do it outside it’s really easy to clean up too!
Bubble painting is a fun and creating activity that encourages kids to use their imagination, experiment with colors, and create unique patterns and designs.
While they are making bubble art they will also be working on lots of motor skills as they manipulate the bubble blowers and blow air to make bubbles, and problem solving skills as they discover how hard to blow to make a bubble and how to get them to pop just right onto the paper. It’s also a great time to learn about the science of bubbles!
Kids will love experimenting with blowing paint bubbles and making a bubble blowing painting.
Bubble Painting for Kids
Bubble painting is a super fun and super easy to do!
We used just two ingredients – bubble mixture and liquid food colouring – and my kids made painting after painting, and stayed engaged and busy creating for a very long time.
Bubble Painting Supplies
To do some bubble blowing paintings you will need:
- Bubble mixture – we used a commercial mix from a bubble blowing set (similar to this one)
- Food colouring
- Bubble wands
- Cups and/or trays to dip your wands into
- Large sheets of painting paper
How to Do Bubble Painting with Kids.
- Start by mixing up your bubble paint solution by tipping a little bubble mixture into each tray or cup – one for each colour. Then add a little food colouring to each tray and stir gently – you don’t want to make too many bubbles in your cup because the bubbles don’t work so well when the mixture is all bubbly. We made red, blue, yellow and pink bubble paint solution.
- Set out a large piece of paper onto a flat surface. If you are working inside make sure to cover the surface so you don’t get paint on it.
- Dip the bubble wand into the bubble paint solution then gently blow bubbles downwards so they land on the paper and pop.
- Blow more paint bubbles and add more and more to your paper until it is covered in popping painted bubbles! Place the paper somewhere flat to dry and make another bubble painting!
Bubble Painting Hints & Tips:
- The activity is a little messy but our mixture did not stain at all, in fact it was really easy to clean up thanks to the soapy bubbles!
- This is perfect for an outdoor art activity so no stray bubbles pop anywhere you don’t want them too.
- I would suggest wearing art aprons and covering work surfaces too.
- If your colourful bubbles are not showing up on the paper, be sure to use food dye with nice strong pigments, or you can try adding a small amount of nontoxic paint to the mixture to add more colour.
- For younger children have them practice blowing bubbles with plain bubble solution before you add the food dye as it can be tricky for little ones to remember to blow and not to put the bubble wand too close to their mouth.
The effect the bubbles make on the paper is amazing and the experience was lots and lots of fun!
For even more fun activities exploring colour, check out Kaleidoscope.
This is STEM, art and literacy like you’ve never seen it before – dressed up in all the colours of the rainbow!
Kaleidoscope: Hands-On Explorations in Colour (and Color!) includes 25 awe-inspiring color activities that integrate learning across a range of subject areas, including the STEM topics of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as art, literacy and cooking. This is a great resource for teachers, parents, camp organisers, youth and community group leaders, homeschoolers, out of school care educators and more.Click here to find out more.
Do you have a favourite bubbly activity that your children love?
More Art Activities for Kids
You might also like these art activities:
Modelling Clay Pictures.
Ice Painting.
Spider Web Scratch Art.
Christie Burnett
Christie Burnett is a teacher, author and mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to find engaging, high quality learning ideas.
Wow! I love the results of this activity! I’ve seen this done before but these are awesome! We played with a DIY Giant Bubble recipe last week (from happy hooligans in case you’re interested) and the first things the kids said was “next time let’s color the bubbles!” Thank you for sharing this. We’re off to buy bubble mix
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Does it work on canvases?
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I am not sure that the food dye would be intense enough to make much a lasting impression on canvas. Worth a try, though 🙂
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Try using fabric dye (put a lot, so the colors are intense) – tried 😉
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I think this would be a most enjoyable activity for most children. I love the creativity it inspires. It is so easy to prepare and to actually do. Thank you for another wonderful craft.
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This is such an awesome idea!! I will be trying it out this weekend!
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i do crafts with special needs adults and i am alway’s looking for new thing’s this is cool
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How is it done? Didn’t see that. Is there a mix of paint and soap?
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What a great idea! I’ve done similar stuff before but this has turned out so well. We will definitely be giving this a go!
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Hey I tried this with my group of kids today and the color didn’t show when the bubbles popped! We were super excited about it so I was wondering if there were any tips on what I should do to make it turn out better next time? I did as you explained.
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Did you figure out why it didn’t work? I want to try this with my preschoolers so would love any advice. Thanks!
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This is a really neat idea! I have 2 suggestions or teachers/therapists that might use this idea.
1) Please be very aware of children with allergies. I had 2 last year that were allergic to red dye.2) A great extension of this activity to stimulate higher-level thinking is to have the kids do the activity. Let the bubbles dry, then have the student do a writing activity about what the resulting picture reminds them of (sort of like cloud-watching and identifying what shapes the clouds remind you of).
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