How to Make Bubbles With Homemade Bubble Solution 

Do your kids love blowing bubbles? Making bubbles is a classical pastime activity that children love doing. And popping bubbles is a whole other fun task that gets even adults excited!

In this article, we share a simple and cost-effective recipe for a DIY Bubble Solution that will give you an unlimited supply of refills.

• DIY Bubble Solution
• Homemade Bubble Solution Without Glycerin
• How To Make Coloured Bubbles
• DIY Bubble Wand Ideas
• Learning While Making Homemade Bubbles
• Experimentation of Best Homemade Bubbles Solution
• Science Behind Bubbles
• FAQ

Children will love this, and for parents, we will be showing how you can convert this fun experience into a cool science experiment and a fun activity for kids. 

How to Make Bubble Solution At Home

There are several recipes of how to make bubble solution at home out there that comprise various ingredients.

Here, we will be showing some tried and tested recipes that use easy-to-find ingredients and give gigantic and strong bubbles!

The below bubble recipe with glycerin is one of the easiest and certainly one of the best bubble solution recipes to try with kids.

Here’s what you need to make about 850ml – 900ml bubble mixture:

• Liquid dish soap/dishwashing liquid – ½ cup (one part)
• Warm water – 3 cups (six parts)
• Clean container with lid
• Glycerin 1 Tablespoon (You can buy from a pharmacy)

How to do it:

Step 1: First, add warm water into the clean container. 

Step 2: Next, add the liquid dish soap, and stir gently to prevent suds from forming.

Step 3: Once the dish soap and water are thoroughly mixed, add glycerine to the solution. Stir again to ensure the glycerine has spread throughout the solution.

Step 4: This is the most difficult step in this easy, simple bubbles recipe – You have to let the bubble mixture sit overnight before your kids can blow bubbles. That is if you want the best results.

Related: Distract them off the bubble solution with Lava Lamp Science Experiment. It is easy, quick and promices oodles of fun!

Kids are impatient creatures and this step gets them really on the nerves. That’s why we almost always make the bubble solution late in the evening.

This helps kill the waiting time and kids wake up excited the next day without much nudging!

In case you have a really impatient lot, let the bubble mixture sit for at least 20 minutes before kids get out their bubble wands.

Related: Also try your hands Oobleck – the non-newtonian fluid that will amaze you!

Homemade Bubble Solution Without Glycerin

This recipe to make bubble solution is the same as above except for glycerin. As an alternative to glycerin in your homemade bubble recipe, you can use either of the following options for the bubble mixture:

• ¼ cup of corn syrup
• ½ cup of sugar
• One tablespoon of baking soda

Making bubbles at home cannot get more fun and easier than this!

Both the Bubble solution recipes promise big, bouncy homemade bubbles that will have your kids jumping with joy.

Related; Love bouncy bubbles? We bet your kids will also Bouncing Eggs. Yes! We kid you not!

Let your kids take out their bubble wands and blow bubbles to see who can make the biggest bubble.

How To Make Coloured Bubbles

How about making bubbles that are coloured? Normal, plain old bubbles are wonderful, however coloured bubbles really do notch up the fun factor.

Simply add a few drops of liquid food colouring to your bubble solution to make your tinted version of DIY bubbles.

DIY Bubble Wand Ideas

While the store bought bubble wands are great, they are no match for homemade bubble wands that will get your little engineers thinking and coming out with fabulous, creative ideas.

Have fun looking at the different things that make bubbles in your home. Here is a little hint what to look for – holes!

Yes! Look for things that have holes in them.

Here are several suggestions on how to make homemade bubble wands to get you and your kids started:

1. Fly Swatters – Though highly unusual, we assure you they make for excellent DIY bubble wands.
2. Colanders – a little tricky alternative as you would need a really big dish to dip them in.
3. Slotted and Perforated Spatulas – Kitchen is the best place for home experiment supplies and you will find plenty of things, including slotted and perforated spatulas, that can work as nifty bubble wands.
4. Straws
5. Sieve – tea sieves work particularly well as they are small and easy to dip into the bubble solution.
6. Pipe Cleaners – these make for excellent bubble wands for kids. You can make them in various shapes as well.
7. Socks – Repurpose old socks and wrap them over an old plastic bottle’s bottom that has been cut off.

Related: Notch up the fun with these amazing, brain boosting Outdoor STEM Activities for Kids.

Learning While Making Homemade Bubbles

Get children involved in making the homemade bubble solution as it promotes several math and science concepts and STEM skills enjoyably.

Kids will become more familiar with measuring while making the bubble solution, and you can introduce the application of ratios in homemade bubble recipe. Some scenarios would be:

• Measure the required amounts of ingredients using a measuring cylinder
• Finding out how many milliliters in one ½ cup, and 3 cups
• If you use one whole cup of dish soap liquid, how many cups of warm water will you need?
• The temperature of the water at the start and the temperature of the final bubble solution after letting it rest. By how much has the temperature decreased?

Quick Tip: Don’t make it all serious! Make sure to throw in a Science joke or a Math Pun here and there to keep your kidoo’s interest alive and kicking.

Experimentation of Best Homemade Bubbles Solution

Early exposure to experimentation and enquiry helps develop logical reasoning and problem-solving skills in children.

Fun activities like bubble solution making and blowing bubbles create several opportunities for experimentation.

Here’s an experiment that can be done to demonstrate the effects of glycerine, cornstarch/baking soda on bubble strength.

1. Label the three cups “Only Dish Soap,” “Glycerin“, and “Corn Syrup or Baking Soda” respectively.
2. Add the same amount of lukewarm water to all three cups.
3. Add the same amount of dish soap to the three containers and stir well.
4. Add 1 tablespoon of glycerine to the “Glycerine” cup and 1 tablespoon of corn syrup to the “corn syrup” cup, and add 1 extra tablespoon of water to the “Only Dishwash” cup.
5. Stir three solutions well, and let them settle for some time. 
6. Create bubbles using a bubble wand (use 3 identical bubble wands or the same bubble wand rinsed with clean water after each turn) and try to catch them on the bubble wand.
7. Use a timer to find out how long it takes the bubble to pop.

Carry out 5 trials to calculate the average time. Then, encourage children to have a meaningful discussion around the following points:

• The importance of using the same amount of water and dishwashing liquid to make the bubble experiment fair. 
• An extra tablespoon of water was added to the cup of “Only Dish Soap” to make sure the volume of solutions remained constant.
• Experiments are repeated to minimize any errors. By obtaining the average of the time recorded, you can get a more reliable result. 
• If the experiment is done properly, the results should show that the solutions in cups with glycerine and cornstarch, had longer times than the “Only Dish Soap” cup.

Discuss with which bubble solution you were able to blow bubbles that were bigger and lasted longer. Analyze to arrive at conclusions based on the observations.

Science Behind Bubbles

Blowing bubbles is a simple and joyful summer activity that embodies intriguing science concepts behind the scenes.

Certain concepts are advanced but parents can get students to explore various ideas and become inspired about the true science behind bubbles.

Here are three key questions that can be discussed:

Question #1 Why are Bubbles Naturally Spheres?

This is a question that will get kids to study 3-D objects and their characteristics.

A sphere is the most efficient 3-D shape in volume per surface area. That means that it will hold the most amount of content with the lowest surface area.

A wonderful natural occurrence that utilizes this concept is the shape of fruits and vegetables. Most of them are round.

Related: Indulge your little ones in fun activities, which sneak in science learning with Preschool Science Activities.

This helps maximize the content while reducing the covering/skin on the fruits or vegetables. This in turn reduces the area that is exposed to other insects and physical damage.

The internal and external forces in a bubble act in a way that constricts its surface area to the minimum possible, hence spherical bubbles are formed.

Question #2 What Are The Factors That Affect The Size And Strength Of a Bubble?

Bubbles consist of a thin film of soap solution that is made up of three layers, a layer of water sandwiched between two layers of soap on the inside and outside of the bubble.

Bubbles burst when the layer of water evaporates. The glycerine or alternative ingredients that you add in the bubble solution, help increase the thickness and density of the soap solution.

Related: Explore these exciting Hygiene Activities for Kids that will help your kids understand how to keep germs at bay and spare you from nagging them to wash their hands.

This creates a barrier which works at slowing down the rate of evaporation. The thicker the solution the stronger the bubbles are and the bigger they can get without bursting. 

Question #3 How Come Soap Works Better Than Other Liquids?

This has to do with surface tension. Surface tension is the force that holds liquid molecules together.

In water, these forces (that is surface tension) are too high. This hinders the formation of bubbles as the molecules are held together tightly.

Quick Tip: Learn what is surface tension through these Hands-on Surface Tension Experiments for kids.

Adding detergents or soap reduces the strength of surface tension, thereby allowing the formation of bubbles. This is the main effect that helps remove stains, oils, and grease from our clothing and dishes. 

FAQ