balloons Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Simple Experiments for Kids with Fun Balloon Yo-Yos

April 25, 2015 By Deirdre

You may have made balloon yo-yos at your house, but we hadn’t made them before this week. As a part of the the A-Z Science Experiments for Kids series hosted by Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails, my son and I conducted a series of cool experiments that explored balloon yo-yos. (You may remember earlier in the series we explored friction and wind.)

I read a number of sets of directions on how to make a balloon yo-yos. We used the directions found on Tinkerlab. Her directions said you could use water, seeds, or rice to fill the balloons that would become yo-yos.

We filled one balloon with a mixture of dried beans and one with rice. Each balloon had about a 1/2 a cup of filler placed inside it. Tinkerlab directions recommended using a funnel to add your filler and so we did just that.

Hint: One of us tried to dump all of one of the ingredients into the funnel at one time. It went way faster and made less mess when it was added a little at a time.

When all of each item or as much as we could get in was in, we tied a knot on the end of the balloon. Then we tied a rope made of rubber bands onto it. The rope was created by slipping one end of a rubber band through the another rubber band. Then the first band was pulled back through itself. (It sounds tricky, but it isn’t.) The same looping technique was used to attach the strand of bands to the balloon.

Wait! What supplies did we use for this science experiment?

The links below are affiliate links.

Dried beans
Rice
Polka Dot Balloons – (You don’t have to have balloons with dots, but we sure enjoyed them at my house.)
Funnel
Rubber bands

Here are some things we had to talk about before we could form our hypothesis:

With the balloons yo-yos done we were ready to form a hypothesis about how each balloon would act differently or the same when the balloon was dropped.

Would having a different object inside it make it act and bounce differently?

Which yo-yo balloon would pull down toward the ground more?

What would be the best way to hold the rubber band strand?

What was the best way to get the yo-yo going?

Did bouncing our hands or our whole bodies affect how well the yo-yo worked?

Experiments for Kids With Balloon Yo-Yos

We both took turns bouncing the yo-yos up and down.

I found that placing the rubber band at the end of the stand of bands around my flattened hand worked the best. I was able to hit the yo-yo as it bounced up with the palm of my hand.

I couldn’t get the yo-yo to bounce back up when I tried to have it on just one or two fingers.

JDaniel liked to use the same technique that I did. He tended to hold one hand out to the side to guide it back on course if it started to swing out instead of going down. He also tried the “Around the World” yo-yo trick with the balloon yo-yo. It was much more fun than simply trying to get it to go up and down.

Results of the Experiments for Kids

We didn’t find a difference in the way the two balloons yo-yos bounced. My son tended to like to explore and play with the yo-yo with beans though.
We both liked having the rubber band over our hands while bouncing the yo-yo. After looking at the pictures we took I found that my son and I both tended to have our thumbs splayed away from our hands.
As I mentioned earlier, my son liked swinging the yo-yo around before going up and down. Sometimes just around and around. I loved just going up and down. We didn’t really decide on the best way to bounce the yo-yo.
Bouncing your hand or head or your whole body was fun, but it really didn’t make a difference in how the yo-yo bounced.

We will really need to conduct some of these experiments for kids with water balloon yo-yos this summer. It will be fun to see how they work out in our experiments.

You will find more great science experiments for kids on my Early Learning Science Pinterest board.

Please stop by and check out all the other A to Z of Science Experiments for kids. There is a complete list of them on Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails.

If you try these balloon yo-yo experiments with your children, please leave me a comment below telling me about how your experiments went or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

Together Box Review

March 18, 2014 By Deirdre

We all have times in our lives when we want to do activities with our kids, but we don’t have the time to gather all the materials we would need to do them. At my house having to rush out at any moment to meet my mom at the hospital due to a fall or keep things running at home when I come home from work, really hampers time to shop for the bits and pieces I might need for an activity. When I came across Together Box, I knew that I had found a great way to have the materials for fun activities sent right to me.

Everything needed for the activities featured in the each kit comes with the kit. It was truly wonderful to open up the box and know that we were ready to get started. There was no running out to get something or searching for something in a cabinet.

JDaniel and I just took the box to the kitchen table, flipped through the activity choices and selected the one that we wanted to do first. It was totally stress free. It was truly a wonderful opportunity to spend time together and play.

The first activity we selected was the Balloon Ninja Marshmallow Launcher activity. I tried to create a face on my balloons that looked just like the one in the picture on the activity card. JDaniel created his own original design. All the activities on the cards are open to creative tweaks. I just love that.

We hung the ninjas on the fences in our backyard and put a sheet on the ground just below the ninjas. We didn’t want to get the marshmallows dirty. ( You can’t eat marshmallows that have fallen on the ground.) It was such fun to try to hit the balloons. JDaniel found that if you got too close to the balloons that they rebounded off of the balloons and flew behind the sheet. It took several marshmallow launches to find the right distance to pull back the balloon launcher.

The second activity we decided to try was the rock launcher. We set up this activity between the handrails on our front steps by tying a string with a straw on it onto each handrail. Then we attached a balloon to the straw with tape. (Yes, even tape came with the kit.) I think my son liked the noise the balloon gave as it flew across the string as much as watching the balloon fly.

We did our activities outside, but each could have been done inside. That is another wonderful thing about the activities that come in the kit they can be done anywhere.

I think the kit would be great to get for your own family to do just for fun, but I also think it would be fun to send to a family that is going through a challenging time. It sure gave my son and I an opportunity to build a memory during a though time at my house.

Disclaimer: I was compensated for this review and was sent a Together Box sample box. I would buy another box in a heartbeat.

Memorial Day Hot Air Balloon Festival- Chasing Balloons

May 29, 2013 By Deirdre

Something super wonderful happens every summer in not too far away from where we live. The Aloft hot air balloon festival in held at Heritage Park in Simpsonville, South Carolina. While many families attend the festival to enjoy the rides, special food, concerts and to observe a field filled with balloons, we enjoy the balloon festival from outside the park. Why? We love balloon chasing.

Somewhere between 6-8 p.m. each night of the festival the balloons take off from Heritage Park. We head down to the park around 6:30 to see which way the cars in front of the park are facing. The direction they are facing is usually the way the balloons are going to travel.

This year they were facing toward the southeast. We drove to a school near by and waited with about thirty other cars filled with people for the balloons to take off. After waiting about fifteen minutes, JDaniel challenged me to chase him around a grassy area in front of the school. Until the balloons took off, JDaniel and I were the entertainment. Well, their were a few other children running around too.

Some of the people in the parking lot had taken out chairs, picnic dinners, and coolers of drinks. These were the non-chasers. The chasers were waiting for the first few balloons to take off and then they would hustle out of the parking lot to follow them.

We as I mentioned are in the balloon chasing group. My sister and nephew ( Who were visiting us.) were shocked to learn that my family is not the only family to spend a Saturday night in May chasing balloons. As soon as we had seen twelve or so balloons, we began our chase.

During the hot air balloon chase it can look like balloon are heading one direction only to swerve off in another direction. They go where ever the wind blows them. We go where ever the roads will let us go. Sometimes we end up in a housing developments that suddenly dead end. When that happens, we have to backtrack out of the development try to find a main road that will take us the direction we want to go it.

A sign we have gone in the right direction is the appearance of a chase vehicle for a particular balloon. If we get behind one of them, we know we will end up where a hot air balloon is going to land. This year when came across one, but it was on the side of the road. Its passengers had spread a map across its hood. We decided not to wait for them to find the right road. We headed off to find it on our own.

Not soon after we did find it. There were a line of cars in front of us that had found it too. Thankfully we found a golf course with a parking lot that was open to the public to park in near where we thought they would land. Several dozen balloons flew over our heads while we got out of our car. It was amazing.

We decided not to return to the line of cars chasing the balloons instead we walked on a path across from the parking lot to follow the balloons on foot. Some of us walked. My nephew and JDaniel ran to try to catch the balloons.

We followed the path to its end and watched more balloons stream past us. It looked like we won’t be able to see a balloon land this year.

God must have heard the pleas of two boys who desperately wanted to see a balloon land. Just was we turned around to head back to the car two balloons landed in the field. The boys were thrilled. They got to run up to each of the balloons to check it them out.

What a night! Simpsonville, South Carolina is not the most hip or cool place to be most Saturday nights, but once a year it is the coolest place to be. There is something wonderful about watching a hot air balloon take off and sail across the sky. Watching a balloon traveling across a blue sky is better than any movie. I don’t know how many times we each said words like cool, incredible, awesome, or amazing.

If you are ever near Simpsonville on a Memorial Day weekend, I hope you will go balloon chasing too.