Putting the balloons to bed
The balloons came out and they batted them around the room.
When it was time to put them away, they gathered them into a plastic sack. An adult got up on top of the full sack.
“The balloons put their strength together, so they don't pop even when I get on.”
After that they were climbing onto the sack themselves.
“This is like the trampoline at the play cafe!”
They stayed on it a long while.
“I want to do it again tomorrow!”
To keep the balloons for the next day there was nowhere good to put them.
“Let's put the balloons to bed on the rest mat.”
The balloons kept rolling off, so an adult walled the mat in with a table and a board.
3–5pretend playcause and effect
Bent into a flower
Each of them picked the color they wanted and drew on their balloon with markers and glitter stickers.
Then they talked about what could be done with a balloon, and to music they batted them, sent them up high, kicked them.
Long balloons came out too. They bent those and joined them into shapes — one into something like a flower, one into what they called a magic wand.
3–5using their hands
A pool made of balloons
There were a lot of balloons out, and they said they should make a swimming pool.
They built the space out of blocks and filled it with balloons. Then they built steps for getting in.
Before getting in they went through the pool things and picked what to wear, put it on, and climbed in, kicking their hands and feet as if in water.
Then they made waves with the balloons.
3–5noticing other childrenpretend play
Why do they stick?
They had made snow globes and were watching the paper snowflakes and the small things inside move around.
Then a balloon got rubbed against cloth.
The snowflakes jumped onto it, and came off again.
“That's amazing.”
“Why do they stick?”
They did it over and over, and told each other what they saw.
3–5communicationcause and effect
Getting to white
There were balloons blown up big like dinosaur eggs, with paper and glue to go on them.
Tearing the paper and gluing it down, they liked how the glue came off in lumps, and kept squeezing more out instead of spreading it.
Paper went onto the lumps and disappeared under them, and the stickiness got onto their hands, so they went and washed, came back, and spread the glue evenly this time.
The balloons underneath were yellow, so it took a lot of paper before white came through. Some of them said it was too much and went off to something else.
One stayed with it, gluing carefully, saying they wanted to be like the mother dinosaur, and finished an egg.
3–5using their hands
A balloon, but it bounces
An adult put balloons inside rubber balls and handed them out, and they gathered round.
One threw a ball at the floor and it came up high with a pop of a sound.
“Whoa, it goes really high!”
“Let me try. It's a balloon, but it bounces like a ball.”
After that they were throwing them at the wall and catching them coming back, heading them as they came down, tapping them along the floor with a flat hand.
“One, two, three — I did it four times!”
Outside they threw them as high as they could.
“Look at mine — it'll reach the clouds!”
3–5noticing other childrencause and effect
Your hair follows it
They were on where electricity comes from.
“If you rub a balloon on your head, your hair follows it.”
“My hand went prickly when I was playing at the playground.”
“Toys have batteries in them.”
“Without a battery a toy doesn't work.”
Then they built a small spin dryer and wired a battery to it, and switched it on and off, watching the drum turn and the wet sponge come out dry.
“When it's spinning you can turn it upside down and the sponge doesn't fall out. Why is that?”
“The water all came out of the sponge, so it's dry again.”
“When the basket spins you can't see the lines.”
3–5communicationcause and effect
It won't work
They wanted to blow the balloons up themselves, so they tried.
“It won't work.”
There wasn't enough breath in them yet. An adult showed them a pump, and how the air comes out of it and the balloon gets big, and blew the balloons up for them.
Then they wanted them decorated, and drew on them with markers.
3–5using their hands
Everything sticks to it
They took the balloons they had drawn faces on into the woods and batted them about.
The wind kept taking them, so passing one back and forth did not work. They hit them where they liked instead and ran along the leaf-covered paths.
Balloons that ended up in the branches got fetched down.
The static picked up leaves, and the leaves stayed on.
“Why does everything stick to it?”
When one popped, and that child was upset, an adult blew up a spare and swapped it in.
3–5noticing other childrencause and effect
One is the whole watermelon
They got out the watermelon fans they had made the day before, and then made watermelon balloons — green balloons with black vinyl shapes on them.
An adult said the two were both watermelons but they looked different.
One of them pointed at the fan.
“That one is cut.”
“The balloon is a whole watermelon, and the fan is a watermelon that's been cut.”
Then they were asked how the two could be played with, and each went their own way — one batting the balloon up with the fan, remembering a racket game from earlier in the week, one fanning the balloon along on the moving air, one pushing the balloon where they wanted it with the fan.
3–5communicationusing their handspretend play
This is my bottom
They had been talking about what they could do for themselves now they were older, and wiping after the toilet came up. Balloons stood in for bottoms.
“This is my bottom.”
They went through how to hold the paper, and the order it goes in, and practiced it on the balloons.
Afterward they wanted to keep playing with the balloons, so they pushed the tables and chairs over to one side themselves, and in the space that opened up they threw the balloons high and caught them, and passed them back and forth, and batted them, working out how hard to hit.
3–5noticing other childrenpretend play