Balloon Animals and YouTube

Hi everyone!  How is your summer going?  We have been very busy this past week with Vacation Bible School and gearing up for more fun this week.  On the 4th of July we celebrate E's 11th birthday, which means a trip to the water park and on the 5th it is my husband's birthday, so this is always a go, go, go time of the summer for us.  However, among the hustle and bustle the children still need some suggestions of what to do when we are home in the afternoon (especially when I have pulled the t.v. and all devices).  So out came the balloons.

We started with a package of animal balloons and the book Crazy Balloon Modeling.

It was so interesting to watch the children attack this project.  E got right to work making a dog for herself and then for B our youngest. K wanted a ladybug which proved to be too much for her and for me.  (If you follow me on Facebook, you saw my post "It's official, "I suck at balloon animals!"  AJ took a long, long time to decide on what to make.

Poor little K was so frustrated about her lack of abilities but then she got creative,  She scrapped the book and just followed her own ideas and made a few hats and balloons.  I was so proud of her.  She gets frustrated then can go into a very negative mode but she pulled herself out and moved forward.

E is a get to it kind of gal and she helped B participate by making him a dog and a humming bird.

Then we moved on to YouTube. Is there no end to the self and home education that can be done through that website?  If you want to make balloon animals just search "easy balloon animals" and you will be overwhelmed with choices.  AJ watched and watched then finally made a sword and a dog.

Watching a YouTube tutorial.

E is making a heart she saw on YouTube.

After the animal balloons, out came the party balloons for games of all kinds.

So, don't ever underestimate the fun that balloons can be on a hot summer afternoon.  I think I will also add this to our list of winter activity ideas.

I also wanted to tell you how fabulous rocket balloons are.  I don't have any pictures but if you haven't tried them yet, you should.  Once you pump them up they travel a long distance with a great noise.

And just in case you wanted to know what I did to help in this fun, since I was a complete failure at making animals, well I was the official balloon tie-er.

Today is Montessori Monday and I am linking up!