So, in one of my previous posts, I talked about making string balls. All you need to do is blow up a balloon, dip yarn in glue and wrap the balloon. When it dries, pop the balloon and take out the deflated balloon. Easy, right? I started making the string balls with a few classes last week. It was definitely a comedy of errors. This was not an easy, low stress project. First, we blew up the balloons too big. If the balloons were larger than a small melon it was hard for the kids to keep a grip on them. The balloons kept slipping out of their hands, flying across the tables, bouncing, and splashing glue in people's hair. So, TIP #1: BLOW UP SMALL BALLOONS (like water balloon size)! So, I went out and bought a bunch of water balloons, the smaller kind. I soon discovered you can't blow up water balloons with your mouth. The kind we bought just would not blow up!! So TIP #2: BUY REGULAR BALLOONS, the smallest kind, and blow them up to a small size. TIP #3: Cut a few really long pieces of yarn and use them to wrap the balloon. Wrap tightly otherwise they will fall off. Don't just place the yarn on the string, actually wrap and overlap it. Some of the string balls collapsed after they were dry and we had to reinsert a balloon and blow it back up to push out the sides. Then, we reinforced them with more yarn and glue.
We are making these into large mobiles. Soon I will show you pictures of the mobiles!!
I haven't made string balls in years! What fun they are .... I'm thinking I need to take out a bit of time to make some.
ReplyDeleteI did this a few years ago...I didn't even attempt to have them blow the balloons up as I thought the tying of the knot was going to be the hardest part. And I didn't want to touch the end of the balloon that someone just had their mouth on, germs! lol I bought an inexpensive balloon pump to blow the balloons up myself.
ReplyDeleteSome students made a successful one but some students really had a hard time being gentle with the yarn wrapping and ended up continuously pulling too hard on the yarn, thus pulling it right off every time. But, it was a good learning experience for the kids and the ones that did turn out were pretty fantastic :)
Tho' my students are too young to try doing this yet, I could totally see doing these for part of my Halloween decorations- thanks for the tips!
ReplyDeleteWhat was the intent of this project? Do you have a lesson plan for this you could share? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI do not have a lesson plan for this, other than the directions I gave in the last few posts. The reason we made the string balls was to create collaborative mobiles. These are going to be hung at our school in the window atrium thingy.
ReplyDelete