The magical world of Bubbles...

Bubbles are magic! Yes they truly are.. For kids and even for the little kid hiding inside an adult. Bubble fun is my favourite activity in speech therapy sessions. You can do so much with these little popping blobs.. Be it with infants, toddlers, preschoolers or even little older children, the floating, hopping, knocking bubbles work wonders.

I have found that--

• Bubbles are great to break the monotony of a therapy session with the kid. You can see the child's eyes glow at the sight of the bubble toy. So when you feel its getting boring doing the repeated activity with your little one, get the bubbles out!
• They are perfect tools to improve eye contact. Blow one at a time and in front of your face, this way the child tends to look more at you.
• They also help in developing visual tracking skills.
• You can encourage children to learn more words while playing with bubbles.. simple words like- up, down, more, pop, big, small, many, few, near, far, yes, no ...and so on can be focussed upon. You just need to consistenly repeat these words while playing with them.
• You can practice "blowing" skills (important oral motor skill for speech development) with bubbles.Children also learn rounding of lips during this fun activity.
• Popping the bubbles teaches cause and effect relationship.It also helps in fine motor control of finger pointing.
• This also instills the habit of turn taking. You blow and the child pops. Then you switch roles. Simple!
• Blowing bubbles in front of a big mirror helps in teaching imitation skills too.
• Simple instruction following can be another motive behind taking up this activity.. " pop the bubbles" , " pop the smallest one", etc.
• Bubbles can be used to teach "how to make a request". "Can I please have one more!"
• You can use them to make the child respond yes/no..
• The concepts of size, number, color etc all can be taught with the floating bubbles.
• Bubbles can be used to teach better breathing control hence you  indirectly work on improving the strength of abdominal muscles of speech.
• When the bubble hits the child on his body, you can also revise body parts.
• They work as super rewards for children of all ages.

I use different types of bubble tumblers. Children especially like flashy and  attractive ones. I have a variety of shapes with me...sunday ice cream,ice lolly, fish, butterflies etc. They all work beautifully!

Check out some intersting bubble activities cum recipes here!