Bubble Snake!

The nice spring weather has finally decided to grace us with its presence and we are elated. Except for the fact that it went form 30 to 80 in one week and I have 3 very pale children who require gobs of sunscreen any time we decide to set foot out of this house. (No lie, I cannot even count how many cans and face sticks we go through each summer) The good thing is, that when S was seeing a dermatologist for a wart issue he told her mom that she has some of the best skin he has ever seen and that we must be taking great care of it! Score 1 for the nanny!

Anyways with the nice weather and the fact that we have dropped some our after school activities (thank goodness, we were becoming super crazy busy!) I am coming up new ways to keep the kids entertained. On the way to taking W to school, I asked him what he would think about doing bubbles in the afternoon. He was all for it, but I figured it needed to be something that wasn't just the regular old bubbles, even though there is nothing wrong with simple bubbles. I like to stay creative and new and exciting, it's one thing the kids say they love about me. I am very happy to oblige.

I knew that I had seen something about bubble snakes on Pinterest so I took my quest there and found this Pin. I clicked on it and knew that this is what we were going to be doing today. As well as the tutorial on how to make the bubble snake maker, there is a link to a Bubble Refill Station, which I have always wanted to make. We go through bubbles like it is no ones business, seriously. They can get to be really expensive too, so I decided it would be good if we had our own bubbles.

So after the oven repair man was done telling me a lot of stuff I didn't understand and then calling my boss to have him talk to him, I piled the kids in the car and we headed off to Target to get all of our supplies. I let the kids choose the container they wanted to put the bubbles in and luckily since it is spring time there are a TON to choose from right now. We used this simple recipe, 2 1/2 cups water, 1/2 cup corn syrup, and 1/2 cup of dawn dish soap. You put the corn syrup and water in a bowl and heat in microwave for 3 minutes and then stir in the dish soap. We quadrupled the recipe because we had that much corn syrup and dish soap and wanted to use most of it to get the most bubbles possible. After all the mixing we put it in our refill station and set it up outside on the kids picnic table.

 

Having three kids I know the importance of making sure that everyone has their own thing or it can get real serious real fast. I bought three pie tins to old the bubbles and gave each child one. (My goal today is to write their name in it so there is no confusion at all!) Inside I emptied and cut the bottoms off of three water bottles while I had the children go and get a wash cloth for each of them. Once they brought the wash cloths I took a rubber band and secured it over the opening on the bottom of the bottle. We took the snake makers outside and I gave a brief overview on how to properly use the maker and the importance of breathing out into the maker and not in as to avoid bubbles coming in their mouth (only 1 out of 3 children ended up breathing in bubbles, I'll say that's an ok record, she recovered and was back out in an instant!). Then they were off and boy did they have fun!

 

 

(S's face cracks me up, she can never just have a normal face!)

 

They played with them for a good 30 minutes before bubbles started to get everywhere and people were crying and it was definitely time to clean up and head inside. The girls spent most of the time plotting about their American Girl dolls and whether or not W would be a good babysitter, turns out he wasn't because the doll broke her leg (I was the Dr, so I got to diagnose and put a cast on her). S scolded W and told him "W, We told you not to put children in the chair on an empty stomach, that's how they fall off!" who knew!?!?

 

The only thing I would recommend it making sure that you cut the wash cloth down to a circle so that all the extras don't just hang out there because we ended up getting those soaked and it became real messy real quick.

  Another fantastic link up with Stephanie at BEAUtiful mess