Download progression document
Includes statements from Development Matters (birth to age five) and the relevant ELGs in full, for the Bubble wands provocation
Early Learning Goal links
- Mathematics ELG: Numerical Patterns
- Understanding the World ELG: Past and Present
- Understanding the World ELG: People, Culture and Communities
- Understanding the World ELG: The Natural World
- Expressive Arts and Design ELG: Creating with Materials
Characteristics of effective learning
Play, Be, C Units provide enabling environments with teaching and support from adults. Reflecting on the characteristics of effective teaching and learning, children will have opportunity to learn and develop by:
- Playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’.
- Active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties and enjoy achievements.
- Creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.
Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework: accessed November 2024. Available under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
What you will need
- 6 l water
- 300 ml washing up liquid (Fairy ALWAYS works)
- 24 g guar gum (available on internet)
- 15 g baking powder or bicarbonate of soda
- A bucket or similar container to mix and store the mixture
- A sieve
- A whisk – electric is best
- Large spoon- wooden or metal
- Bubble wands
- Blowing bubbles provocation
- The fluid scientist poster
Duration
10 minutes or so.
STEM vocabulary to introduce
Liquid, mixture, solution, gas, air, blow, wind, move, rise, float, sink, up, down, across, left, right, large, small, shape, round, sphere, burst, surface, inside, outside, more, less
Before you start – making the bubble solution
This is an easy mixture of one quarter washing up liquid to three quarters water. A litre of liquid will be enough for 30 children to explore with.
What to do – blowing the bubbles
Put your bubble wands and bucket or container of solution out for the children. Tell the children they are going to be curious like fluid scientists and observe what happens when they blow into the straw. The will need to be resilient if they can’t blow a bubble at first, and keep trying until they can. You could display the fluid scientist poster and use our blowing bubbles provocation.
Challenge the children to create as many different shapes with the different bubble wands as they can. You could use our blowing bubbles provocation.
It is worth modelling dipping bubble wands into solution and pulling them out without vigorous swishing. Children love to do this, and it quickly results in a bucket full of unusable froth!
Safety
Remind the children to always blow not suck! If a child does get bubble solution in their mouth, they should rinse their mouth out with clean water and then spit the water out. Make sure that they don’t swallow the water.
Questions to ask to support and extend learning
- Which shaped wand have you chosen?
- Which shaped bubble do you think you will blow?
- Which shape did you blow?
- Can you try another shaped bubble wand?
- Which shape did you blow this time?
- Does the star shaped bubbled wand make star shaped bubbles?
- Can you choose a bubble wand that you think will make big/small bubbles?
- Why did you choose that one?
- What are the bubbles made from?
- What is inside them? What is on the outside?
- Which wand makes the most bubbles?
- Which wand makes the least bubbles?
Remember to refer to the children as fluid scientists and praise them for using the attributes. You could say things like:
“You have been curious like a fluid scientist by investigating different shaped bubble wands…”
“Well done, you observed which shaped bubbles you created…”
Other things to try
Challenge the children to make their own bubble wands from pipe cleaners or modelling wire and test them to see which shaped bubbles they create. You could use our bubble wands provocation.
The science of fluids
We have put together some useful information about the science of fluids to accompany this activity. Don’t worry, this is for your information only and to help you answer any questions children may have. We don’t expect you to explain this to the children in your setting!
Why are bubbles always spheres?
Mixing washing-up liquid with water forms a solution. When you dip your wand into the solution, a flat film made of a layer of water sandwiched between two layers of soap is formed across the bubble wand. This flat surface has the smallest surface area and no volume of air.
When you start blowing air in that soapy film, the liquid soapy skin starts to stretch and air is trapped by a thin film of the bubble solution. This creates a surface tension or tightness in the bubble skin, and it tries to shrink the bubble into a shape with the smallest surface area for the volume of air inside it – which is always a sphere.
How do you blow big or small bubbles?
If you use a big bubble wand, the surface area and volume of the soapy film covering your bubble wand is greater than using a small bubble wand where the surface area and volume of bubble solution is less. The more bubble solution you start with, the larger the bubble you can blow.
