What's In the Balloon?

A popular activity has been "What's In the Bag?" where an item is placed in a thin bag and the resident must use touch alone to determine what it is. Typically I tell the person whose turn it is to close their eyes while I show everyone else what I'm putting in the bag. It really is fun when everyone is participating and the person who is trying to determine the object describes what he or she is feeling before guessing. However, it can get boring when people take a long time and don't say anything about what they are feeling so I thought I'd shake things up with a new version.

The idea of "What's In the Balloon" is to put substances in balloons, tie them off, and feel through the balloon. I thought the benefit would be that multiple people could participate at the same time, jotting down their guesses for each numbered balloon, and we could reveal them to everyone at the same time. It was either going to be really easy to guess, or really difficult. It turned out not to be really easy so I encouraged the residents to describe what they were feeling, rather than just make a guess.

The results were entertaining. I stuffed 7 balloons with sprinkles, coffee grounds, mini marshmallows, tissues, flour, dry black beans, and coconut shreds. Only one guess out of 5 people was correct (a tissue), although more descriptions came close (bird seed, banana, little rocks, mud). I would definitely do it again.