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Materials
Pack of balloons (Dollar Tree)
Various fillers: Rice, corn kernels, flour, flour and water mixture, water beads, sugar, lentils, cous cous, water, hair gel, bird seed, etc. etc.
Fill balloons using a funnel and something to push it down into the ballon. For the liquids we used a ketchup squirt bottle, and for the dry materials we used a funnel and straw. You don't have to fill them up very much.
A great sensory experience and so many options for play!
"What are theeeeeessssseeeee Mommy!? Can we sort them?" We started off with sorting the different colors.
She was extremely curious as to what was inside. "Do they have water beads in them? Maybe it's pasta?"
I filled a total of 12 balloons.
3 yellow balloons and 3 blue balloons contained sugar, cous cous, and water.
3 pink balloons, and 3 orange balloons contained flour, hair gel, and lentils.
I wanted her to be able to match what was inside. I only started with 3 in each color because I wasn't sure on how well she would do with them. I did not want her to become frustrated. It was fairly easy for her to match up, so next time I will add a couple more for each color.
"I found a match! That feels like water is inside."
My 16M old loved squeezing these. Fun!
"I found another match! What is in there, Mommy?"
Making patterns
"Can we do that again?"
Something I will do different next time.... My oldest really wanted to know what was inside. She is a very visual person. Next time I will take a small sample of what is inside each balloon and put them in clear cups. This will allow her to match what she actually sees to what is hidden in the balloon.
RL
Great ideas of what to fill them with. I'm thinking another way for her to know what's inside is for her to help you fill them... after the matching of course.
ReplyDeleteI did a sound match game for my daughter with baby food jars. I filled the 12 jars with 6 different items (beads, bells, beans, rocks, etc) I then slipped 6 into baby socks and left the other 6 uncovered. She then had to shake them and listen to the different sounds to find the ones that matched. :0)
ReplyDeleteThis is great! I was wondering as I read if you cut them open at the end to reveal what was inside, but I like your idea of turning it into a matching game.
ReplyDeletehttp://gratefullygrowingingrace.blogspot.com
Using small children's sized water bottles and filling them with the same things is a great way to help out those visual learners...just make sure to tape or hot glue lids closed. Not as "touch" sensory oriented but visual and auditory :)
ReplyDeleteI love that! I'm going to use that as a lesson in my classroom next month.
ReplyDeleteAwesome idea -I'm going to fill some balloons this week!
ReplyDeleteMy kids loved this!! Thanks for the idea.
ReplyDeleteI did some of these and allowed my preschool class to "paint" with them as well...a stamping approach works best. We used these as we talked about the 5 senses.
ReplyDeleteI found that you can put just about anything you want, except liquids, in a balloon if you can find a bottle that you can stretch the top of the balloon around and suck the air out of the bottle making the balloon expand in the bottle. Then when you are done just take it off the top and pull the balloon out. I have found that the squeeze on jelly containers work great for us. We have done gloop and ooblek in them and they were great.
ReplyDelete