Bean Bag and Balloon Olympics

With the arrival of the Olympics, my boys are in an especially competitive mood, eagerly desiring to showcase their athletic prowess!  But the heat this last week has been I.N.T.E.N.S.E!  I think I may have chosen one of the hottest days of the year to run errands in the middle of the afternoon. ugh.

So in light of the heat, we decided to do an {indoor} Balloon and Bean Bag Olympics.  The beauty of many of these activities is that they are a means of getting active, burning some of that boundless boy energy and activating their little brains to learn.

I’ve mentioned it in my last two posts, but I cannot emphasize enough how important MOVEMENT is to wiring the brain to learn.  So with that in mind, here are several fun activities that will help increase oxygen flow to the brain, stimulate the vestibular system and increase bilateral integration – all vitally important to the learning process!

Let the games begin!

Balloon Events

1. Balloon Tap Race ~ Pick the longest open stretch in your home and stage a relay race where you tap the balloon in the air to one end and back! Be sure to cheer on your teammates in the process!

2. Balloon Face Race ~ Repeat the relay but this time, get on your hands and knees and push the balloon with your face!

3. Volleyball ~ This started just as a tapping back and forth with my youngest, but soon morphed into a more nuanced volleyball match. Chairs can be lined up to act as the net. You can play to see who can keep it afloat on their side of the ‘net’. We ended up instituting a ‘no spike’ rule.

4. Foot Volleyball ~ This is the activity that sparked the whole idea of our Balloon Olympics when I saw it on pinterest! As a team see how long you can keep a balloon in the air using only your feet.

5. Stationary Tap ~ With feet glued to the floor, see how long they can tap the balloon in the air with one finger!

Bean-Bag Events

1. Head Relay ~ Classic balance game.  We raced the longest indoor length in our home several times.  This is a great way to learn that accuracy and balance makes for faster race times than speed alone. 

2. Bean Bag Crossover ~ This great game requires balance.  While sitting on a ball and one hand held behind your back take the opposite arm and cross over to grab one bean bag at a time and move to the opposite bucket.  Each of the boys biffed it several times and we couldn’t contain the giggles that this challenge induced!

3. Hit the Square ~ Tape a square on the floor and see how many bean bags you can toss into the target.  Beware of the baby.  Tape on carpet is quite alluring!

4. Toe-to-Toe Relay ~ Conduct a relay race where you balance a beanbag on top of each foot. See how long it takes you to devise a strategy to keep them there!

5. Bean Bag Balance Beam ~ We set up wooden blocks for our balance beam and set out to see what kinds of ‘tricks’ we could do while maintaining balance!