Bubbles

Does your child love bubbles?

Well not only do children love bubbles, but speech therapists do, too! Bubbles are a fun, interactive activity to keep your child’s attention and to work on some great speech therapy at the same time. Bubbles are a great people toy. This means its a toy that keeps your child engaged with you, not with pushing buttons to make a noise or lights go off.

Check out some ways to work on speech therapy at home with bubbles. There is an easy to print, one page picture to hang on your fridge at the end of this blog post!

Use Key Words with Actions

  • Open and Close the bubble jar
    • Close it tight and work on asking for help
  • Put the wand in and take the want out
  • Blow the bubbles up or blow them down
  • Pop the bubbles, Stomp the bubbles, Clap the bubbles, Catch the bubbles
  • Blow big and small bubbles

Identify and Label Body Parts

  1. Blow bubbles and catch one on the wand
  2. Tell child “I’m going to get your [body part]
  3. Pop the bubble on that body part and say POP! Excited and loudly

Build Anticipation

  • Ready, set, [insert 5 full second pause], GO!
  • 1..2…[insert 5 full second pause] THREE!

Take Turns

  • Say “My turn” or “Child’s turn!” while taking their hand and patting it on their chest
  • Say “Your turn” or “Mommy/Daddy’s turn” and take their hand, patting it on your chest
    • Make your turn fast so that they learn their turn will come again!

Encourage Eye Contact

  • Hold the wand up towards your eye level before blowing to encourage your child to look towards you
  • Catch a bubble on the wand and hold it towards your eye level for the child to pop
  • **Keep in mind: we never want to force any child to have eye contact with us
    • This is helpful for our distracted children who need a bit of support to remember to include others**

Trouble Shooting

What if I don’t have bubbles?

  • You can make your own. Feel free to google a recipe or follow this one from Hanen: Mix 1 part dish soap with 3 parts water (e.g. ½ cup dish soap and 1 ½ cups water). Add a couple of teaspoons of sugar and stir.

I love bubbles, but don’t want to make a mess!

  • You can bring bubbles outside and avoid any spills inside
  • We love non-spill bubbles. Fubbles (not an ad) is our favorite.

We lost our bubble wand, now what?

  • Make a new one!
    • Bend a pipe cleaner into a bubble wand.
    • Ue items from your kitchen with holes:
      • Cookie cutters, buttons, plastic-soda rings, tumbler tops, anything!

My kid doesn’t like bubbles.

Not a problem. Just like adults, some children love certain things and can’t be bothered about others. There are plenty of other people games and activities to work on your kid’s language development

One Page Handout

More Language Strategies

Looking for more language strategies to include in your daily routines at home to help your baby’s language develop?

Let’s Get in Touch.

References

  1. The Hanen Center. (2021). Give Your Child a Reason to Communicate with Bubbles. (n.d.). Retrieved December 20, 2021, from hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/Give-Your-Child-a-Reason-to-Communicate-with-Bubbl.aspx