Bubble Painting (aka don't drink the bubble water!)

So far I've learned a lot from experimenting with boycraft.  The following rules always seem to apply:

• Anything with puddles of glue, mixing seemingly innocuous ingredients into strange concoctions, or pounding on things with a hammer are definite winners.  
• The time spent really focusing on the boy without the distraction of his sisters, the laundry, cleaning out the car, emptying the dishwasher, etc, pays itself back many times over in hugs and seriously improved behavior when I can't focus on him quite so intently.  (it feels like he's gone from scowly-storm-cloud to ray-of-sunshine in the past few weeks).
• Messy projects are better than not-messy projects.  Always. 

I'm sure that these rules are a vast oversimplification, but they definitely applied to this project and we had a great time (as did Josie, when she came home from school and discovered the creative mess)!  There are a few ways to do bubble painting, but this is really my favorite, as you get a nice sheet of paper that you can use for stationery, cut up for another project, or collage onto. 

Materials:

• shallow dish
• drinking straw
• liquid food coloring or tempera paint
• dish soap (we used Palmolive)
  

Process:

• Mix about 1 Tablepoon dish soap with about 2/3 cup water and either 1 Tablespoon tempera paint or 10 drops liquid food coloring.    The tempera paint gives a more opaque look, while the food coloring is more translucent and watercolor-like.  We did a few sheets with layers of color (the green is food coloring, the purple tempera), and these were definite favorites! 
• Use the straw to blow a big pile of bubbles...make sure to tell your child not to suck through the straw.  Blow!  Don't drink the bubble water!  Ick!
  
• Lay your paper flat on top of the pile of bubbles, then peel it off (don't let it sit too long or it'll pop all of the bubbles and sink into the the liquid at the bottom) then lay it out to dry.