"Pop Art" (Bubble Painting)

{This is my favorite of the ones Mia made.}

Here is a good one that had me wondering why we had never done this before. (Can you guess where I found the idea? Yep. Pinterest.) It is fun and simple for preschoolers on up. Instead of using paint, we made our bubble paint with food coloring. (Warning: No matter how capable you think your two-and-a-half year old may be, he will still suck up the liquid through the straw instead of blowing into it. Yes, I pretty much knew this was likely to happen, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Oddly enough, he wasn't at all bothered by the taste of the dish soap and may have kept drinking it if I hadn't stopped him. Silly boy.) Now, go forth and make your own "pop art."

{Bubble Art by Mia, Age 5}

Materials:

• cups
• straws
• water
• food coloring
• liquid dish soap
• newspaper
• white paper

Directions:

1. Protect work surface with newspaper. In a cup, combine water, a few drops of food coloring, and a drop or two of dish soap. Do this for as many colors as you would like to use. We used neon purple, neon pink, neon blue, and neon green, and kept adding color as we went to get more saturated color.
2. Insert a straw and have your child blow bubbles so that they foam up over the rim of the cup, but not so hard that it splashes over. This takes a bit of practice, we learned. Note: I also read somewhere that if you put a pin hole in the straw first, it will prevent them from sucking up the liquid, but I didn't know this before Logan tried, and I don't know if it really works or not.
3. Before bubbles pop, lay your paper over top of them and allow them to pop on the paper. Repeat as desired. Once the artwork is dry, you can display it. Note: This would probably work best with watercolor paper, but since I didn't have any we used white cardstock and 12" x 12" white scrapbooking paper (the plain pages that come in the albums -- I never use them for scrapbooking but they are great for kids' artwork, and they fits nicely in the frames meant for LP albums. This makes for easy wall art.)