Blacklight fun for toddlers

I recently posted about blacklight stuff you can do with babies that insist on eating everything (Iz...) but let's be honest, there are way more fun things you can do once they've moved past this stage and you don't have to worry about stuff being edible. Here are some recent things we've done with D:

Waterbeads

These turned out even cooler than I thought. I just put some dehydrated waterbeads in some thiamine water and left them for 24 hours. Because they absorb all the water as they grow these looked awesome under the blacklight!

 

D scooped them, filled cupcake cases, squished them. Don't they look cool?!

And then he mixed them with shaving foam for a completely different sensation - they even made the foam glow!

Then after playing we just stored them in a Tupperware on a little bit of water and they were ready for instant play over and over again :)

Note: even without the blacklight the beads will appear the colour they are when dehydrated (or a yellow colour if clear beforehand) so you can equally play with them in regular light too

Playdough

We used this amazing recipe from Fun At Home With Kids to make our own playdough - less than 5 minutes and in a microwave. Amazing! I had to fiddle the ingredients a bit as they were all in American measures but this is what I did and it worked great:

150g flour
100g salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
240ml water
1 tablespoon oil

(we obviously used thiamine water as we wanted it to glow under the blacklight, but equally if you just want coloured playdough just put a few drops of food colouring in the water before adding it).

For the full directions click here (definitely recommend it - so super easy and they are likely all ingredients you already have in the cupboard at home).

Then we just used it like regular playdough - but with glows! Awesome :)

How cool is that glow?!

  

Foamy soap bubbles

We did this a while ago but I just haven't managed to write about it until now. Firstly I made some glowing bubble mix (just mix bubble mix with neon paints) in a range of colours. Then blow like crazy with a straw. Cue massive mountains of brightly coloured bubbles that just explode over the top of the cups! 

 

The plan was to make bubble print pictures but to be honest he just got a bit over excited by the appearance of the bubbles and so just wanted to play in them! He did eventually lay down some watercolour paper and made bubble prints - not quite what I'd initially envisaged (a little more smeary!) but lovely nonetheless (and even more so as they were completely D's).

Then the colourful foam was just too tempting so it became a glowing bubble-free-for-all and soon became a foamy smooshy bubbly mess :)

Quick aside - I think I've mentioned this before but if you want to do activities that involve straw blowing and not sucking (sometimes difficult for toddlers to master and a mouthful of bubblemix is not that tasty...) then make a little hole in the shaft of the straw. Just doing that makes it pretty much impossible to suck anything up the straw, even if they try! 
 

Bubble art

And finally blacklight bubble art which I've blogged about before (see here).
 

 

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Still not tempted to buy a blacklight? We've got even more activities planned so, if not already, hopefully you will be soon!