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My youngest daughter had a snowman-theme birthday party this year and you may remember from our Robot Punchbox that I try to find a pinata-like activity for our birthday parties. Both of my girls were born in the winter, so we have inside parties and I don’t have a great place to have kids swinging a bat in the house. We also usually have a mix of big kids and little kids. I worry a little bit about everyone getting a reasonably similar haul when they all dash together for the pinata treats. Pinatas are fun, though, so I wanted something that had the same surprise element that would work well inside and also portion the treats in advance. We put together this “Snowman Balloon Pop” game. 

We filled one balloon per guest with (equally portioned) treats and mixed those randomly with other balloons that were filled with confetti. Each kid took a turn popping balloons until they found one with treats. Some kids found their treats on the first balloon and others had to pop several before they found one with treats. Once everyone had a turn, anyone could help pop the rest of the balloons. (Word of caution: some children can be afraid of balloons popping. We didn’t have anyone that was bothered by this at our party, but I was prepared to abandon the whole thing if someone got upset.)

Here is how we built this guy:

  1. Fill the balloons. This can be a little tricky, but I just stretched the mouth of the balloon open and pushed the treats inside. I would definitely try to keep the treats small – we did foil wrapped chocolates, lollipops, and little things like this. I had some other snowman themed favors, but some were too big to make it into the balloons, so we just had separate favor bags with those items.  Once you have one treat balloon per guest, you can fill the rest with confetti or just keep them empty.
  2. Inflate and tie the balloons
  3. Attach to the box. I used a knitting needle to poke holes in a cardboard box wherever I wanted to attach a balloon. I then used the knitting needle to push the tied end of the balloon through hole from the outside to the inside. From the inside of the box, you can pull it the rest of the way through. Once the knot comes through it holds the balloon in place, but I also taped it down with packaging tape to make it more secure.
  4. Add extra decorations. We added the head and a scarf for our snowman.
  5. Pop balloons at the party! I had the bags with the favors that were too big to fit in the balloon and handed those out before we started. Each kid took their turn and then could add their balloon treats to their favor bag.

Our snowman was only sort of cute (ha!) as a decoration, but he was pretty fun as an activity. I think this game could be adapted to lots of different birthday party themes. Enjoy!