balloons

[Lil-Leo-67]

Kids love balloons! One game they love is tie a string to a balloon & to their foot. (Not to long) Then they have to try to pop the other balloons while trying to keep theirs from getting popped. It's loud & crazy & they love it!

[Lil-Leo-67]

Here's also some great links.

 

Craft Ideas

www.craftideas.com

www.makingfriends.com

www.craftforkids.com

www.kidsdomain.com/craft/_group.html

www.seedsofknowledge.com/treehouse.htm

 

search sites for kids

First Gov for Kids: www.http://www.kids.gov/k_careers.htm

Kids Tools for Searching: www.rcls.org

 

Also, try a google search on kids games... I have found a lot of cool stuff.

 

 

 

[SemperParatus]

Balloon stomp - one of my favorites! Here is a good story...

 

"Robert Roberts writes about a fourth grade class in which the teacher introduced a game called balloon stomp. A balloon was tied to every childs leg, and the object of the game was to pop everyone elses balloon while protecting ones own. The last person with an intact balloon would win.

 

This is a zero-sum game. One person wins; everyone else loses. The success of one causes the failure of others. The object of the game necessitates a winner-take-all mindset. Everyone else is someone to be rooted against.

 

Balloon stomp is survival of the fittest a true Darwinian exercise. The fourth graders in Roberts story entered into the spirit of the game with vigor. Balloons were relentlessly targeted and destroyed. A few of the children clung to the sidelines like wallflowers at a middle school dance, but their balloons were doomed just the same. The entire battle was over in a matter of seconds, leaving only one balloon inflated. Its owner was, of course, the most disliked kid in the class.

 

Its hard to really win at a game like balloon stomp. In order to complete your mission, you have to be pushy, rude and offensive.

 

Roberts goes on to write that a second class was introduced to the same game. Only this time it was a class of mentally handicapped children. They were given the same explanation as the first class, and the signal to begin was given. But the game proceeded very differently. Perhaps the instructions were given too quickly for children with learning disabilities to grasp them. The one idea that got through was that the balloons were supposed to be popped.

 

So it was the balloons, not the other players, that were viewed as enemies. Instead of fighting each other, they began helping each other pop balloons. One little girl knelt down and held her balloon carefully in place, like a holder for a field goal kicker. A little boy stomped it flat. Then he knelt down and held his balloon for her. It went on like this for several minutes until all the balloons were vanquished, and everybody cheered. Everybody won.

 

Who got the game right, and who got the game wrong?"