Bubble Investigation Week of May 19th, 2014

While playing outside the children have shown a strong interest in blowing, catching and observing bubbles. They often ask “make it bigger” and watch as a teacher creates a large bubble.  When the children themselves try to create their own bubble, they struggle and have not yet mastered the concept of “blowing softly”.  To further investigate bubbles, we brought the bubbles into our classroom and began an exploration.

  

At first the children really struggled with creating the bubbles.  They watched as the teachers produced bubbles of various sizes, longing to create some of their own.  The children had to determine how hard they could blow into the straw to create a bubble; too hard and the bubble would burst but too soft and no bubble would be produced.  They tried blowing through their straw and onto their hand, to determine what would be hard or soft.   As they found the perfect strength with which to blow, some of the children created bubbles of their own.  We discovered we could stick our straw through a bubble, carefully of course, without it popping.  However, it would not work if we used our fingers.  We also found we could create bubbles inside of another bubble.  The children then carried over their exploration to our outside time and produced more bubbles that afternoon.  Next week we will be exploring the consistency of bubbles, and what happens when we add another liquid to the mix.  We will first test out these new bubbles by adding oil to our solution.