Rabid Pooping Bubble Monsters

It's mid-July in Florida (aka Satan's Buttcrack) which means that the time we spend outside has to be strategically planned for the hours of 6:30-8:45am. That is literally the only acceptable time to be outside here if one wants to avoid the Rango shrivel or being carried away by Miracle-Grow-possibly-Zika-infested mosquitoes.

We try to spend some time outside everyday. Sometimes we stay at home and play on the slide or with the sand table. Sometimes we swim. Usually though, The Spawn wants to go to the park. These little excursions involve driving to the park, unloading, and "racing" with The Spawn around all of the playground equipment 10-15 times. Then he's ready to go. That's it. No sliding. No swinging. Just running around and around and around. I've had several conversations with him about how we could have just run around the yard at home but it always ends with tearful protestations and requests to return to the park immediately to go "slide," otherwise known as, "run around the slides".

It's nearing the end of our summer vacation, so I've been having fun with some not-so-educational craft projects before the school year starts up. Since we need outdoor entertainment that doesn't involve running around playground equipment, I thought it was time to break out the bubbles. Here's what you'll need:

Rabid Pooping Bubble Monsters

• empty water bottles
• cutting utensil (I like throwing knives and broken glass but I guess you could use scissors if you're one of those boring scissor-using people)
• fabric or socks
• rubber bands
• foam sheets
• googly eyes
• hot glue gun & sticks
• Dawn dishwashing liquid (classic blue works best but I only have "New Zealand Springs". Can you blame me? It smells less like plastic.)
• Glycerin (look for this in the pharmacy section near the surgical washes and bandages)
• water
• paper plates and a plastic cup

You'll want to prep this the day before you want to use them to let the bubble stuff do its secret magical chemical bonding shit.

Make your bubble stuff: Mix 8 oz of water with 3 tbsp dawn and 1 tbsp glycerine. Let your solution sit overnight. I tripled the recipe and poured it into an old 2 liter bottle. Then I created a quick cardstock label, et voilà!

Cut the bottoms off of your water bottles.
Decorate your bottles with foam and googly eyes to make adorable monsters. Note: depending on which way you decorate, you'll end up with either a rabid monster or a pooping one.
 

Cut fabric to fit over the bottom of your bottles. I used an old flour sack towel. Secure with rubber band or ponytail holder.

 Set up outside.

Pour a small amount on bubble stuff into the cup. Add more than 10 drops of food coloring. Mix and pour onto plate. I found that I used too much bubble stuff and not enough color. Don't make the same mistake that I did. Learn from my sins.

Dip the cloth-covered end of your bubble monster into the bubbles then blow into the spout to create your foamy awesomeness.

Foamy poop!!!

There's no hope for him now, Travis. He's suffering. You know we've got to do it.

 Bubble success!

Moveable Alphabet

I really like the Montessori "movable" alphabet. I refuse to use that spelling, but the concept is solid. These are giant wooden letters which are color coded (blue vowels and red consonants) and used on a mat to let the student begin working with CVC words even before they're capable of writing. They're also pretty fucking expensive. Here's the "small" version on Amazon.

And it's only $59.99!!!

This would be great for The Spawn right now. He's beginning to read. He knows all of his letter sounds and enjoys trying to spell. He writes well but I like to give him a lot of variety when it comes to learning. Enter the moveable alphabet. But since I have such a long Amazon list for this school year, I try to trim the fat wherever possible. Gotta fund the next Disney vacation somehow, eh?

So I spent yesterday evening working on my own version for use with our felt board. Even better, I had all of the supplies on hand already so no need to scavenge for change in the depths of the couch.

I create The Spawn's school materials using fonts from Educational Fontware which includes 33 of the most popular manuscript and cursive font families. A Teacher Pack license is available for $49.95 (academic use only). There are also openware fonts available on sites like dafont.com if you're looking for free font options.

I opened up Publisher and created a document with the alphabet, punctuation, and numbers 0-9 in the manuscript font that I use for all of his alphabet work. I color coded the letters like the Montessori movable alphabet and printed copies on cardstock.

Decorative printer art by The Spawn.

Trimming and laminating came next.

And more trimming...

Finally I had all of them finished. I printed 4 of each consonant and 10 of each vowel in addition to the punctuation and numbers. Then I cut out 154 felt rectangles and glued one onto the back of each laminated tile.

I also put together a tabletop felt board out of an extra 8x10 frame I had lying around for The Spawn to use at his desk.

Success! He loved his new letters.

I'll link any future activities that I come up with to use with the moveable alphabet.