Balloons 5 Stars

29 August 2012

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By Hilary White – educational and craft writer

It’s surprising how much you can do with a balloon! Try the following ideas with your children and help them explore activities ranging from dance, painting and story-telling to the science of blowing up a balloon.

Exploring balloons

Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Making Relationships

Let the children play freely with balloons, and help them to discover their properties and how they behave. Explore how a balloon moves slowly when you pat it into the air, compared with a ball. Does the balloon move faster if it is only blown up a little, rather than fully inflated?

Give the children balloons blown up to different sizes and some deflated balloons to play with in the water tray. Talk about how the blown up balloons ‘float’ on the water because they are ‘light’. Fill some balloons with water and let the children explore them. Talk about how they ‘sink’ in the water because they are ‘heavy’. Do the deflated balloons sink or float?

Fill some balloons with water, including coloured water, and put them in the freezer to make ‘ice balloons’. Once the water has frozen, cut the rubber off some of the ice balloons. Let the ice develop a layer of melt-water over the surface and encourage the children to explore the ice balloons, keeping a close eye on little fingers to make sure they don’t get too cold. Compare a balloon blown up with air, a water balloon and an ice balloon.