Balloon Confusion Game

The point of the Balloon Confusion game is simply to have lots of crazy fun with balloons. They are an inexpensive and fun way to entertain the kids with an endless array of games and activities you can do with them. Balloon games are great fun, whether you are playing with them at a birthday party, at home or during a class activity. A balloon is a source of excitement and joy for kids.

Game sheet

number of players: 5+
ages: 5+
materials: one balloon for each child, an additional balloon for each team of 5, one marble for half of the balloons, 20 balloons = 10 marbles
Played indoors or outdoors
Play time: 10 min

How to play the Balloon Confusion Game?

Blow up the balloons and in half of them put a marble in the bottom before you tie it. This makes the balloons move in unpredictable ways. If you would like to put marbles in every balloon, you may do that as well. You may also put the marble in the extra balloon.
There are a few ways to play this game, and all will be fun. It is up to you to decide which way will work best for your group. You can have the children split into groups of 5, or you can have them all work together for mass chaos. If you want to adjust the group number to be a little larger, that is fine as well. If you decided to use marbles for half of the balloons, then give each child a balloon to hold, alternating marble and no marble. Then, have them throw their balloons in the air and try to stabilize them (every balloon is open for every player to keep in the air). Then after a few minutes, throw the extra balloon into the mix. You can decide if the extra balloon has a marble or not. No matter how you decide to mix and match the number of marbles, this game works best if you let the kids each throw a balloon in the air to get their teams going and then toss the extra balloon in. The team that lets a balloon touches the floor loses. If you do not want to play with teams, then the game is over if a balloon touches the floor. They can of course start over at that point, but that round is finished. You can time them to see how long they can go without letting a balloon hit the ground.
The point of this game is simply to have lots of crazy fun with balloons. If something doesn’t work well, then have a few extra balloons on hand that you can add marbles to, or simply blow up and have no marbles in any balloons.