Kid Fun: Bubbles

I had made myself a promise that I wouldn't share each and every summer activity that the boys and I do because that might get boring.  BUT...this one is too good not to share.
  If you have toddlers...or even older kids...in your care, this is a super simple, super affordable activity that will provide them and you with hours of entertainment.  And I share it because while I'm sure others have thought of it, I have not seen it online, at least not in this simple form, so I figured it may be worth putting out there!
My inspiration came from our Children's Museum.  They have a bubble room there in which the kids can make bubbles with all sorts of materials.  The real highlight of the room, though, is that you can pull a big rope attached to a big hoop to put yourself in a bubble.  All the kids love it...mine included! In fact, mine loves anything having to do with bubbles.  So when I was coming up with my summer list of fun, I knew I wanted to include something with bubbles...something more than the typical backyard wand fun we usually have...and I figured I could probably recreate the museum's exhibit.
When I looked online for recipes on how to make "giant bubbles," though, there were lists of all kinds of ingredients...corn syrup, glycerin, etc.  That seemed way too complicated, so I decided to just go with this...

Obviously, any dish soap would work, and for reference sake, that bottle was full when I started and was used entirely in the pool for bubble making.  Basically, I filled the pool up with water and dish soap, threw some bubble making tools in there, and then let Colton go wild.

But just like the highlight of the museum exhibit is the "putting yourself in the bubble" thing, I figured Colton would really get a thrill doing the same thing at home.  I reasoned a hula hoop would work the same, and it did!  Except Colton wasn't really interested in having a bubble around him!  He did enjoy making gigantic bubbles with the hoop, though!

The pictures don't necessarily do it justice since it was a little hard to capture them while trying to play with him, but he had a blast! 

One piece of advice if you do attempt this is that the soap makes the pool pretty slippery.  Colton really enjoyed falling a few times, and then he seemed to get over it, and seemed to figure it out and we were fine.  But keep a good eye out at first.

 And Levi had a pretty good time watching/eating the stuff (his favorite activity lately!):

Like I said at the beginning, I highly recommend this little activity, especially considering the cost (near free!) and the ease!