Yes, yes, another activity involving balloons! They are big time fun at our house as far as my girls are concerned, so steel yourselves for even more of them to come :-)
This game is just like a traditional matching/memory game, but using balloons instead of cards. I designed it to work for both of our girls age groups (2 and 4), to teach colour matching for Squeak and sight word matching for Bubble.
And of course, to have an excuse to run around crazy in a room full of balloons.
That too ;-)
WE USED:
* balloons of the same colour
* stickers
(we used a pack of coloured dots and a pack of large labels)
* texta/marker
optional - we use balloon clips when we play games involving balloons, they can be bought at most party/discount stores very cheaply (we paid $2 for a pack of 100 from our local dollar shop). Using balloon clips instead of tying off balloons means you can deflate them after the fun is over and reuse them again and again. Better for the budget and better for the environment too.
Inflate your balloons and either tie them off or use balloon clips to secure them. You will need enough balloons to create as many pairs as you will be using in your matching game.
We used ten balloons for Squeak's colour matching game and ten for Bubble's sight word game as well.
You will need two sets of each sticker you intend to use for your matching game since you will need 'pairs'.
For Squeak's colour matching game we put ten coloured dots on the sides of ten balloons (two of each of the five colours).
For Bubble's game I wrote her sight words (two of each word) on large label stickers and she attached them to the sides of her ten balloons.
We threw all of the balloons onto the floor, ran around to stir them up so they were jumbled and then raced to see who could find all of their pairs first.
The girls had to find two matching balloons, say the colour/word (or ask me what it was) then put them on the bed before finding their next pair. There was a lot of crawling, running, sharing and learning going on.
Slice the cauliflower florets as straight as you can, uneven edges will mean your print will not come out as well. If you slice them in half they are easier to hold (rather than in multiple thin slices).
The girls enjoyed the painting part just as much as the printing part!
The prints look like cute little trees, they'd be ideal for making cards or murals.
I covered the tubes of toothpaste so they didn't resemble anything in the bathroom using big label stickers the kids had drawn pictures on. I wanted to differentiate between tubes that were for craft activities and those for personal use!
I just laid our sheet across the table but you could tape it if you need to. A wipeable placemat or series of placemats would work well for this activity as well.
The girls both had different techniques for squeezing their toothpaste and had fun working out the best ways to do it.
Squeak squeezed as much as she could out of her tube and then used the toothbrushes to paint and make patterns.
She especially enjoyed mixing the colours together.
Bubble used her tube for imaginary play, turning this empty ice cream cup into a 'cake' and making 'snails' with her toothpaste.
Bubble icing her cake.
Clean up was made very easy by using a folded piece of scrap cardboard to scrape the paste up (this works well for cleaning up paint as well), then the mat went into the shower for a quick wash down.
Inflate your balloons and either tie them off or use balloon clips to secure them. You will need enough balloons to create as many pairs as you will be using in your matching game.
You will need two sets of each sticker you intend to use for your matching game since you will need 'pairs'.
For Squeak's colour matching game we put ten coloured dots on the sides of ten balloons (two of each of the five colours).
For Bubble's game I wrote her sight words (two of each word) on large label stickers and she attached them to the sides of her ten balloons.
We threw all of the balloons onto the floor, ran around to stir them up so they were jumbled and then raced to see who could find all of their pairs first.
To create our animals I taped animal pictures to wooden building blocks.
The diorama was made using a side cut from a box. I glued a small shoebox at the base and then glued blue and green coloured paper to both to represent sky and grass.
To reveal the 'underground' area the girls just had to lift the lid on the shoebox.
I painted a burrow inside the box and we talked a lot about how the different underground animals dug their holes and why they might live there.
We'll be decorating the backgrounds over the next week and also adding 'animals that fly' to our diorama too.
The animals that live above ground stood on the box.
The animals that live underground went inside the box.
The girls played with this for a long time. I'm glad I hung it in their doll play area because I can see it becoming involved in their imaginary play in many other ways too.
