Backyard Bubble

A while back I stumbled across a website called Play at Home Mom. The site has tons of fun ideas for playing with your kids, from simple little games to big DIY projects. Two of the ideas jumped out at me: the plastic bubble and the light box. Both looked cool, but the bubble was definitely the biggest hit of the weekend.

Around 10 AM Saturday morning I spent about 15 minutes duct-taping up two sides of a 10x25 sheet of 3.5 mil clear plastic. Then I took it outside, rigged it to our fan, and taped up a bit in the middle. Because it was a really windy day, I made a couple loops of duct tape and staked the fan end to the ground. Then I turned on the fan and POOF, we had a bubble.

At first Micah was little unsure of it, mostly because I was dumb enough to joke about it blowing away with him after a particularly strong gust of wind.

But once he went inside, he was in love.

When the wind blew hard, the whole back end of the bubble would lift up, way up, over our heads. At first he was a little scared whenever the whole thing started flapping around, but by Saturday evening he and I both were laughing like crazy and yelling, "It's a windy wind! A WINDY WIND!" It was hilarious at the time, I swear.

A couple things:

1) Suffocation - The plastic we used is a 3.5 mil plastic. It is NOT the super-thin plastic drop cloth material. The thickness of the plastic is such that it cannot be accidentally sucked over a child's face. Also, please keep in mind that air is continually being supplied by the fan and the bubble is never deflated with a child inside. That said...

2) Supervision - It kind of goes without saying that although the risk is low, we still supervised closely. I would have been content to watch from outside, but he wanted me to come in with him. I spent most of the weekend playing inside the bubble with Micah, and it was nice and cool and kind of surreal. I can totally understand why he loves it!

3) Fan placement - The original post showed them using a stand fan. I prefer a fan that sits on the ground because if the kids get excited and run up the plastic wall, they can jerk the fan over. Ditto for wind. A fan on the ground might fall over too, but it won't come down on someone's head.

4) Seams - I was a little sloppy putting the bubble together and didn't get the plastic lined up right in the seams. When the bubble inflated, I had exposed strips of tape. When we deflated the bubble for naptime and came back out later, those exposed strips had stuck to the plastic in several areas and tore it when I tried to pull them apart. When we do this again, I'll be more careful with the seams.

5) Staking - I did a poor job of staking the thing down and spent the entire weekend hitching it back over to the fan. Next time, I'll use bits of rope attached to the seams and I'll properly stake down both the bag and the fan.

For only about $20, we had an activity that totally fascinated Micah for nearly two whole days. I figure we'll give it a shot the next time we have the cousins or Micah's friend Trey over and see if other kids get as much of a kick out of it. My guess is, yes!