Dartless Balloon Game

I recently was called to lead the music in Primary in our LDS ward.  Now if you're not familiar with this calling, it essentially means I am in charge of leading the music during opening exercises and then lead a 20 minute music set in which I teach the children (ages 3-11, which is somewhat unusual, often it is broken into Jr & Sr primaries at 3-7(turning 8) & 8-11) the primary songs, specifically songs for the yearly primary program in the fall!

This year has a beautiful line-up of songs, starting with a new song, If I Listen with My Heart.

It is a beautiful song!  

We've already learned verses 1 & 2 so this week we needed something new to learn verse 3.  So after some brainstorming with my husband he reminded me of this great idea to have a dart-less balloon game!  It was the perfect idea!  

No sharp things, but great incentive to sing!  Most kids love the idea of popping a balloon!

First, one foam-core board from the dollar store, the words printed out big, 12 balloons, 12 tacks, and the numbers 1-12 printed out big.

Next I rolled up the numbers and stuffed one in each balloon.

Then I measured out the board and drew lines that intersect 12 times.

The rest of this I waited until the night before so I didn't have sharp things hanging out at the house all week and balloons taking up way too much space!

Saturday night I poked the tacks through the board at each intersection and used masking tape to tape them down so they didn't fall out

Front of the board

I also inflated all the balloons.

Right before I did the activity (at church, between Sacrament meeting and singing time) I taped the balloons to the board.

They are taped so the tack does not touch the balloon, but is really close!  The idea is that when the child throws a beanbag it will push the balloon against the tack and pop the balloon!

Then when we were ready to go I put the word strips with the third verse on the board and we sang it through a couple of times, talking about the words and such.  Then I let one of the sunbeams (ok, so it was Mr. A, I may have bribed him that he could pop one if he would go potty....) toss a beanbag, and on the second try it popped!  The kids thought it was the coolest!  Then we took the number that fell out and took down the corresponding word strip (12 balloons = 12 word strips)

Then we sang the song again (without the chorus) with the missing word strip.  If they sang it well (got most of the words, sang loud and 'pretty') we did it again!  Sometimes we had two people pop balloons to speed things up a bit.

We didn't get through all 12 balloons in primary, but Mr. A & Mr. C had fun finishing them off when we got home!!!

There are soooo many possibilities with this activity!  This could become your traditional Balloon Pop game, you could put candy in the balloons and it becomes a modified piñata, or you could use it to learn colors, for motor skills, the possibilities are endless!  Enjoy!

I love to share ideas!  Just one request!  If you want to put this idea on your blog too, please link back here to my blog, share the love!!