We just discovered the ultimate sensory experience: a soap foam cupcake station! There was scooping, pouring, squeezing, pumping, pinching, balancing, squealing, spilling, and pretending galore.
Soap foam bubbles have been our favorite sensory bin for years ever since we discovered it on Fun at Home With Kids, and I have been wanting to use these cupcake liners that we just got. It was the perfect combination!
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The best part is that the soap foam can be completely made by the children! All you need is a mixing pitcher. Mine is from Pampered Chef but any would do. This brilliant idea for making soap foam with a pitcher is one that I saw from some photos on the facebook page of Play Counts.
Make soap foam with a pitcher
To make soap foam with a mixing pitcher, you just need three simple ingredients!
- Water
- Liquid soap
- Washable liquid watercolor
I put in one cup of water and about 4 Tablespoons of soap. I just used Palmolive, but I think most any brand would work. Our favorite type of soap is Mrs. Meyer’s. You don’t have to be exact with soap and water amounts. There is a lot of room for flexibility! And if you don’t have the proper pitcher, you can always make soap foam with a mixer.
Then add about 1/2 to 1 Tablespoon of liquid watercolor. Ours is from Discount School Supply but you can get it from Amazon as well. I do not recommend food coloring for a sensory activity. It stains! Liquid watercolor is washable, so every time some spilled, I just reminded myself “it’s just colored water. It’s just colored water.”
Now all the children have to do is pump the handle up and down. The faster they pump, the better the bubbles are. I just tell them to do it until the liquid at the bottom of the pitcher has become bubbles. They were able to turn the entire pitcher into bubbles in about two to three minutes. If they worked really hard, it only took one!
Please keep in mind that soap foam does sting if it gets into the eyes. I recommend close supervision and using it with children who are old enough to understand this.
Make a soap foam cupcake station
Now for the cupcake station! I found these cupcake liners for an amazing deal on Amazon and knew we would make wonderful use out of them. My children got to work right away, filling them up with soap foam.
The sprinkles are made out of craft foam. We just used a hole punch to make them.
I even let them get a little bit fancy with my real cupcake decorating kit.
This cupcake station kept us busy for a solid hour. I’m not gonna lie. The clean up was a lot. Feel free to do this in a sensory bin or outside. I’m wishing we did now, but it was so fun that the mess was totally worth it. Remember, it’s just colored water (with soap) :).
One of the best parts about this is that the soap foam can be constantly remade. As the soap foam dissolves, it turns back to colored water. Just pour it back in the pitcher, and pump it some more! Then you have more soap foam, and no extra ingredients are required.
We decided to change the color midway through! Then it became a color mixing experiment!
If you are looking for the perfect sensory play idea or a fun cupcake station, you will be delighted with this fun soap foam bubble activity!
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Emilie Parry says
I cannot wait to try this with our Creative Tots at our Baking Summer Camp! What a creative idea! Thank you for sharing and I just ordered those cute little cupcake liners and can’t wait to get them!
Katie says
A baking summer camp! Oh man, my daughter would absolutely love that! I hope your Creative Tots have a blast!