10 Pop-it learning activities your kids will love
At SUPA STEM HQ, our kids are just as crazy about fidget poppers as most people’s are right now.
One of the things we love most about pop-it toys is that there is a lot more you can do with them than most people realise.
Of course, they’re great for relaxation, de-stressing and relieving boredom.
Because they’re portable, your kids can take them with them pretty much wherever they go – which can make life a lot easier for the adults when it comes to visiting restaurants or traveling in the car.
They can make a great sensory toy for a wide age range and help kids to process difficult emotions by taking a mental break and focusing on a simple yet satisfying task.
But what we really love about good-quality fidget popper toys is that they can be an amazing educational tool for schools and at home.
We’ve put together a quick guide to some of our favourite cool things to do with pop its that actually help kids to learn too.
Our top educational fidget toy ideas
One of the best ways to use a pop-it toy is for helping kids to learn maths skills in a fun and unusual way.
That’s why many of these ideas are pop-it maths activities and games.
However, you can also use fidget poppers to encourage kids to develop their literacy skills, practice spellings, become more confident with expressing themselves and more.
Check out the surprising educational benefits of pop it fidget toys!
Solving maths problems by popping away!
If your kids need a bit of encouragement to work on their maths skills, using a fidget popper to help them solve maths problems could be the solution. There are plenty of fun pop it maths games you can play.
1. Solving addition problems
Kids can easily use a pop-it toy to help them understand and practice sums involving subtraction and addition. All they need to do is pop the number of bubbles in the sum to find the answer.
This can be really helpful for kids who are visual learners, as they will be able to actually ‘see’ the sum and understand the numbers involved.
2. Working out the answers to subtraction problems
This works very much like using a fidget popper for addition problems.
Just pop the first number of bubbles and then flip the toy over to unpop the second number.
How many are still popped? That’s the answer to the sum!
3. Multiplication made easy
To use a bubble pop toy to practice multiplication, you simply need to pop the first number and then repeat depending on the second number. For example, for 3×4, simply pop a set of 3 bubbles 4 times. Then add them up to find the answer!
4. Dividing numbers using your bubble pop toy
Popping bubbles to practice division can be a little more tricky but still possible. Kids need to pop the total number and then flip the toy over to unpop the bubbles in sets depending on the second number in the sum.
For example, for 9 ÷ 3, pop 9 bubbles and then unpop them in sets of 3. How many sets are needed? You should find the answer is 3!
Of course, you’ll need to bear in mind that you only have a limited number of bubbles to work with, but even smaller pop it toys will have enough bubbles for you to practice basic sums. This is ideal for younger children who are just beginning to learn basic maths concepts.
Literacy games with fidget poppers
Using a permanent marker or stickers, you can quickly and easily transform your pop-it toy into a learning tool for literacy.
Just bear in mind that it may be difficult to remove the marks or stickers afterwards. Of course, you can always add the letters to one side and leave the other blank, which allows your kids to enjoy the best of both worlds!
With most bubble pop toys, you’ll have enough bubbles to add all the letters of the alphabet and some punctuation too.
5. Practising ‘writing’, spelling and identifying letters
Kids can then practice spelling words, writing out sentences (you can make one bubble a ‘space bar’ so it will feel like typing on a laptop!), and identifying letters.
For added fun, you can include a competitive element. Challenge your kids to spell a word as quickly as possible, and even race each other to find a letter or spell a tricky word.
Don’t worry if your kid needs to practice spellings where the same letter is used more than once. Even if they have already popped a particular bubble, they can simply touch that bubble to let you know they know it needs to be used again.
This can be a source of fun in itself – see if your kids can find words that use the same letter many times, or identify how many times particular letters appear in their own full names.
Communication games and oral literacy
Many kids need a bit of help with learning how to communicate through speech with others.
Even older kids who have quite well-developed language skills may struggle sometimes to speak up, express their ideas, listen to others carefully and formulate complex sentences.
Your kids can use their bubble pop toy for a wide range of activities that can support their ability to communicate with others.
6. Listening challenges
For example, you can challenge your child to listen to you or someone else saying a sentence. Can they pop a bubble for each syllable or word? This is a good way to encourage kids to listen really carefully and break down the different elements of speech.
7. The funny story game
Then see if they can invent and tell you a funny story in one sentence (or simply a funny sentence, depending on their age). How long can they make it?
An example might be: ‘one day I went to school with a banana on my head and I used it to fly to the moon so I didn’t have to do my homework’.
8. Pop it sentences
You can also set them a challenge with a bubble limit. For example, only saying a sentence with 5 words, 9 syllables and so on. Kids have to track the number of words or syllables they use by popping bubbles on their fidget popper.
Party games
Many party games can be very educational, and fidget popper party games are no exception.
In fact, this can be a great way to introduce learning activities that are so fun kids don’t even realise they’re learning!
9. Rainbow scavenger hunt
One of our favourites is rainbow finding, which is ideal for younger children but still good fun for older kids who like competitions and races.
This game works really well with rainbow fidget poppers.
In this game, kids have to race to find items in the home (our even outdoors) for each colour on their fidget popper. For example, a red apple, orange notebook, yellow ball and so on.
Every time they find an item, they can pop a bubble. Whoever completes a bubble for each colour (or all the bubbles on their fidget popper) wins!
10. Bubble racing
Another game we like to play with our bubble pop toys is bubble racing. Simply have two kids face each other with the fidget popper between them. Whoever pops all the bubbles in their half first wins!
We hope you enjoyed this quick guide to some of our favourite educational things to do with pop-its.
If you were wondering what you can actually do with a pop-it toy, hopefully this has given you some good ideas!
Need low-cost, fun activity ideas?
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