Balloon Volleyball

It’s been snowing for a couple weeks now, and the energy level in the Children’s department is steadily growing. I tried drop-in Wii gaming and nobody was in to it, so I tried balloon volleyball.

It was easy to set up—I put a table in the middle of the room (the long, low kind) for a ‘net’. I taped off boundaries on either side, blew up a balloon, and let the tweens play for almost two hours. At one point we had 15 kids playing at once.

I let one of the participants play ‘ref’ and keep score. Everyone was pretty good about following the rules and showing good sportsmanship. The only snag occurred when I let them pick the teams. There weren’t any hurt feelings, but the two best players (who happen to play club volleyball) wound up on the same side, and it was a pretty unfair advantage, according to the other players.
I’ll do this again. There’s not much I would change. I’d like to incorporate other balloon games into the mix as well.

Two boys helped me clean up. As a reward, I let each one of them pop a balloon. It was a better incentive than a trophy, candy, etc—they were really excited about it. If it wasn’t such a loud noise, I’d develop a program centered around popping balloons.