Fine Motor
Move & LearnPreschoolers2 Comments
Put balloons to a ton of different active uses with a creative balloon activity race from Brigitte!
If you’re like me (and I bet you are), you’ve got balloons lying around at home. I always seem to stock up for birthdays and parties, but then the balloons end up forgotten and gathering dust.
There’s always the best of intentions to use the extra balloons in different ways, but it doesn’t tend to happen.
I just found a ton of my balloons, stashed away, and was totally inspired to create a big balloon activity race! It’s a great gross motor activity for playtime, too.
Check out my HOAWG inspiration: Jamie’s Original Balloon Activity Course
My kids love playing with balloons! We even have a family New Year’s Eve balloon-based tradition!
Silly Gross Motor Balloon Activity Race Kids Love
This activity was actually really easy and quick to set up. Even though the supplies list is kind of long, I honestly just ran around the house and grabbed whatever seemed good at the moment.
To set up your own balloon activity race, you’ll need:
- computer paper
- 10 balloons
- pencil or pen
- permanent marker
- paper clips
- yogurt or paper cups
- 2 hampers or big baskets
- craft sticks
- rulers
- pipe cleaners
- paper towel roll
- paint stick
NOTE: Balloons are a choking hazard. Adults should blow up the balloons themselves. Always supervise kids while they are playing with balloons. Clean up any pieces immediately after a balloon pops.
I gathered some balloons and wrote a list of activities for my daughters to do on a sheet of computer paper.
These activities included making a paperclip chain, finding something blue, singing the alphabet, hopping on one foot 5 times, and building a tower using 10 yogurt cups. Definitely expand on this list with a mix of gross or fine motor mini-activities!
First, I cut the activity list into strips.
Next, I folded the activity strips into small pieces and put one into each balloon.
I blew up the balloons with the strips of paper in them and tied them shut. Then, I numbered the balloons 1-5 with a permanent marker.
I originally was thinking I would simply have my daughters pop the balloons one by one in order of the numbers and complete the activity listed on the paper in the balloons they popped.
But I decided to expand on that idea by creating an added challenge.
I wrote a duplicate copy of the list of ideas, cut them out, and put them in five other balloons, which I numbered 1-5.
All 10 balloons went into one clothes basket, which I set out on the floor along with some tools (craft sticks, rulers, pipe cleaners, paper towel roll, and paint stick) my daughters could use if interested.
An empty clothes basket was placed about ten feet away from the balloon-filled basket along with some supplies (yogurt cups and paper clips) they would need to complete the activities.
Add Extra Challenges to Your Balloon Activity Race
My daughters and I came up with some rules to follow. I loved working with the kids to create rules – much more effective than grown-up made rules!
Rules
- You must bring the balloons one at a time from the blue basket to the white basket in order of their numbers without touching them with your hands or arms.
- Once the balloon is in the white basket, take the balloon out and pop the balloon any way you choose
- Complete the activity that is on the strip of paper from the popped balloon.
- Run back to the blue basket and start again with the next number balloon.
Then, the race began. It was a lot of fun to watch them run back and forth to complete the tasks.
Each child had their own set of balloons. The first person to pop all the balloons and do each activity correctly would be the winner!
Creativity & Movement for the Win!
One daughter used a ruler and stir stick to grab her balloons. My other daughter used a paper towel tube and ruler for hers.
One daughter attempted to pop her first balloon with a paperclip but soon realized her sister’s idea of popping the balloons with the end of a pipe cleaner was much quicker.
There was a lot of laughter and a few screams as they raced to pop the balloons and complete the activities.
I didn’t have to worry about reading the activities since both of my daughters can read. If they both didn’t know how to read, though, I would have had them race one at a time.
As each balloon was popped, in this scenario, I would read the clue immediately. To keep track, I would have timed each child individually and compared overall times, kind of like Ninja Warrior.
One of the activities involved building a tower (or pyramid) using 10 yogurt cups, which ended up taking one of my daughters a little longer to complete because she accidentally built a pyramid using 15 yogurt cups at first. Great counting practice!
Roll with Extra Balloon Activity Race Challenges
I did make a mistake when I stuffed the strips of activities into the balloons: I randomly stuffed them in the balloons, which meant my daughters ended up with duplicate activities. Oops!
Since there were a total of 5 different activities in 10 balloons, as soon as one got a duplicate, she threw it at her sister to do and grabbed the next balloon. In the end, they each did complete all 5 activities, but my mistake did add some confusion.
My daughters are already begging to do this activity again!
Next time, I will have to make sure there is some way to differentiate the activities so they don’t get any duplicates.
I recommended having all of the balloons with the number 1 as one particular activity, all of the balloons with the number 2 as another specific activity, etc. My daughters said they liked not having the same activities in the same numbered balloons, but you might prefer the predictability.
I suggested they each have one color of a balloon, but they said they liked having a bunch of different colors. For your game, it really just depends on your level of organization.
To keep things straight or for more than two kids, you might want to label each set of 5 balloons with a letter and a number. Child1 would only grab balloons with letter “A,” for example.
That could work! Great idea for next time…
What’s your favorite race activity? We’d love to try your creative ideas!
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