Balloon Keep It Up
Supplies: Balloons
As a kid, I spent an hour keeping a balloon in the air because my sister challenged me to do it. This balloon game challenges teams to keep the balloon up, but the twist is the twister like element of not know what body part you are going to need to use to get the balloon alive in your teams circle.
Balloon Keep It Up Game Prep & Play
a. Blow up several round balloons. You’ll need one per team and have extras ready in case balloons pop during play.
b. Break the guests into groups of 4 – 5 people (another option is one large group and use 2 balloons at a time, until you get down to 7 people) and let them know they are going to be bouncing a balloon back and forth and the person on the active players left is always the next person to hit the balloon (clockwise).
c. Sounds easy enough, then tell them that the balloon must always be hit from the bottom and always be hit upwards and if you let the balloon hit the ground the person whose turn it was is out. Again sounds like a piece of cake. FYI – It helps to have a judge for each team to make sure the rules are followed.
d. During the game the host will be telling you what body part to use to keep the balloon up.
Head, hand, palm, foot, knee, would be the most common elbow, ankle, & butt would be used to make it more competitive.
FYI – The Game Host can “not” call out a body part for each team during Group Play as the balloon moves around each circle in different rates. So the Host will call out a body part every 15 – 20 seconds and then switch it up. If no teams are going out then reduce the time between body parts to 10 – 15 seconds, and so on to get teams to go out and move to the next round. Players continue to hit the balloon with the body part called until the next body part is called.
If you are playing one large group game with 2 balloons, the Game Host turns their back to the game players and calls a new body part every 5 – 10 seconds.
e. So now if the person uses the wrong body part or lets the balloon hit the ground they are out of the game.
f. This game is played in rounds, so once a group’s balloon hits the ground, they stop until all the groups have finished. If you are playing the large group version, if a person lets the balloon drop or hits it with the wrong body part they are immediately out of the game. (So they step out of the circle.) This is needed if there are two balloons going at the same time since the other balloon is active.
Suggest you start are with easy ones like foot, knee hand and once they get a little confident work to increase the difficulty and fun.
g. Increase difficultly and speed until each team has one player left and then the player on the team who keeps the balloon up the longest wins. And if they are really good, just announce they are all winners.
Alter as needed for your age group.
