Bubblewrap shape printing activity for toddlers and preschoolers

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learning with bubblewrap: shape printing


 

We love to re-use ordinary household items in our arts and
crafts
. At the weekend we purchased a new set of wine glasses. They came
wrapped in bubblewrap and were placed into a cardboard box for us to bring home
safely.  Packaging materials are great to
re-use in kids arts and crafts activities and they provided the inspiration for our
Monday making session #makeitmonday.We have used bubblewrap a couple of times before.  The first time we used it to create Jellyfish bodies and we have also used it to print legs onto our Octopus pictures.  The kids really enjoyed painting and printing
with the bubble wrap when we made our Octopus pictures, but it was quite tricky
to handle as it got very slippy and messy very quickly.  Seeing the bubble wrap together with the
cardboard from our wine glasses packaging gave me the idea of attaching the
bubble wrap to the cardboard to make it stronger and therefore much easier for the kids
to handle.

My toddler is very keen on learning shapes and colours at
the moment, so I had the idea to cut out different shapes using the bubblewrap
and then gluing these onto pieces of cardboard.
bubblewrap shape prints

 

These could then be painted and printed onto paper.  
painting bubble wrap shape stamps

 

heart shape bubblewrap stamp
I discovered that bubblewrap isn’t that easy
to cut, so make sure that this is done by an adult only with very sharp
scissors. To make this interesting for my Preschooler as well, we just used
the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow.  We then experimented in mixing these together
and we came up with green, purple, orange and brown.
We started by printing our shapes onto plain white paper,
but then my Preschooler asked if we could print some onto the rest of the
cardboard to see what that looked like.

 

We then had a hunt around to see what other things we could find to
print our shape stamps onto.  We tried
canvas, coloured paper and bubble wrap as well.
painting bubblewrap

 

The canvas worked really well and my son was most fascinated by the
bubble wrap.  I love the imagination of
my Preschooler.  He often steers our
activities in new directions. I try to encourage this as much as possible as
it’s great for his confidence and he’s brilliant at coming up new ideas which I haven’t
thought of. Never underestimate the mind of a 4 year old!

bubble wrap stamp printing

 

 

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31 thoughts on “Bubblewrap shape printing activity for toddlers and preschoolers”

  1. It s amazing what you can make out the things you normally throw away. We have a "making box" which i throw things like packaging, boxes, spare paper etc until we have an idea for them.

  2. I love this. Bubblewrap has always been something we just pop – now we have something else to do with it! Thanks so much for taking part in the Parenting Pin it Party this week xx

  3. This idea is a great way to use bubble wrap and learn about shapes. I am planning on featuring it this week at the Love to Learn Linky. I hope you will stop by this week and link up again-the party starts Thursday 🙂 Have a fun day!

  4. Really great idea, that the stamps aren't 'solid' shapes… Seeing that a cluster of dots creates a 'shape' just as well as a solid blog – it's genius!
    …Haha! Just occurred to me, it's probably only adults that need to be reminded of that anyway… I think our kiddos see shapes, letters and objects all over the place… Miss Six used to point at tree branches and say it was the letter L or that they were rabbit ears!
    Lovely post – thanks for the idea.

  5. Hello Frndz…..
    Thanks for your blog. I just landed up in your blog and I really appreciate your blog. It is full of resourceful information.
    BubbleWrap is a pliable transparent plastic material commonly used for packing fragile items.

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