The $2 Educational Baby Toy Your Little One Will Love For Years!

Okay,  you may have to buy another jar of solution from time to time, but BUBBLES are one of the cheapest, easiest activities for your baby, toddler or preschooler. Don’t be fooled by their vintage simplicity - bubbles are wonderful for early development and learning! 

Bubble Play For Babies 

Benefits of Bubble Play For Babies

  • promotes visual tracking by encouraging baby to follow slow-moving objects with the eyes

  • teaches cause and effect as baby anticipates the bubbles after your big inhales and as he waits for bubbles to pop

  • encourages head turning - an important early motor skills

  • creates Tummy Time fun

  • fosters visual motor skills through reaching for bubbles

  • offers perfect first-consonant sounds for imitation - "buh" in bubble, "puh" in pop

  • makes great practice for using the baby sign for "more"

  • promotes 2 hand use to hold bubble container (with lid tightly on!)

  • tactile sensory play once baby is old enough to touch bubbles

  • social play with parents, siblings and baby friends

Bubble Play Activities for Babies

  • Make No Tears, All Natural Bubbles For Babies: to keep little eyes safe from stinging soap

  • Tummy Time Play: place a shallow pan, like a cookie sheet, of water in front of your belly-down baby (on the floor or over a Tummy Time pillow, rolled towel or nursing pillow). This gives the bubbles a safe spot to land so baby can watch and see them even before she can lift her head high in Tummy Time. It can help to lean over and blow the bubbles directly towards the water.

  • Try the same trick with a shallow pan of water in front of baby while she's in a sidelying position. Sidelying is a great play position for newborns - just be sure to give each side equal time.

  • Or, fill your shallow pan with soapy water (use the the No Tears, All Natural bubble recipe linked above to protect little eyes) and put one end of a straw in it and blow! Makes a fun sound AND a mound of bubbles for baby to watch.

  • Catch a bubble on your wand and let baby reach to pop it. She'll be able to do this long before she'll have the ability to pop a bubble in motion.

  • Leave a (large, non-chokable) bubble wand or a tightly sealed container of bubbles on a low shelf so that your bigger, more mobile baby can choose them as an activity. You'll have to help with the bubble play but your baby will be independently making and communicating choices.

  • Toss a party-favor sized bubble container in your diaper bag (I recommend putting it in a Ziploc to prevent leaks) to entertain baby when you're out and about. I've even blown bubbles on road trips to soothe my fussy car seat passenger (not while I'm driving, of course!)

Bubble Play for Toddlers and Preschoolers

As your baby grows into a toddler and preschooler, bubble play will take on new benefits - using two hands to hold the container and the wand, oral motor skills to blow, fine motor skills to grasp the wand and more. 

Here are a few of my favorite bubble toys for bigger kids:
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Bubble Blowing Bear - awesome for hand strengthening
No Spill Bubbles - nice for fine motor and visual motor skills to put the wand in the slot
Bubble Lawn Mower - the Fisher Price classic push toy
Bubble Pipe - easier for toddlers to blow on a pipe than to blow without putting a wand in their mouth

And some super-fun bubble activities for toddlers and preschoolers:
Bubble Painting from Mama.Papa.Bubba.
Make a Bubble Snake from Adventures of Adam
Indoor Bubble Fun from Best Toys 4 Toddlers
How To Make Giant Bubbles from Sun Hats & Wellie Boots

And just so you know that I'm not the only child development pro ga-ga for bubbles, here's what a fellow OT says about the benefits of bubble play over at MamaOT.

More CanDo Kiddo posts for you to enjoy:


Rachel ColeyTummy Time, Milestones