Water Balloon Hunt

Water balloons are one of our favorite summer activities for kids because they’re such a fun way to cool off and get everyone outside! My kids love swimming and running through the sprinkler, but a water balloon hunt always feels like an extra special treat.

We don’t use water balloons all the time since they take forever to fill and break so quickly, but every once in a while, it’s totally worth it. And with a little twist like this hunt, the fun lasts even longer!

We also have had fun learning and playing with a Water Balloon Phonics game.

I wanted to do a water balloon hunt. I decided to assign each child a shape and then draw that shape on some of the balloons. The kids could only pick up balloons that had their shape on it.

If I did not have this blog, I would have just written their names on the balloons, but I try to keep my kids names off of here so shapes seemed like a good idea. It also reinforces shape recognition!

You will need:

• Water balloons
• Water
• Buckets
• Permanent Marker
• Paper
• Tape

I decided to use a circle, square and triangle as the three shapes. I drew each onto a piece of paper and used some packing tape to tape it on the kids' buckets. This would help them remember what shape they were looking for and check their balloons to make sure they had the right shape.

Now comes my least favorite part - filling the balloons with water. Thirty minutes and twenty one balloons later, I was done.

Next, I took the filled water balloons, dried them with a towel and drew corresponding shapes on them. I did 7 balloons of each shape.

Hiding the balloons was a little tricky because they needed to be in locations where there was nothing around that could make them pop.

It was super hot out and the few balloons I had hid that were sitting in direct sunlight popped before we started our hunt. I put them out a few hours before the hunt which given the extreme heat was too long. Keep that in mind when hiding your balloons on a super hot day.

Let the balloon hunt begin!

Once the kids collected their 7 balloons they were free to play with them as they wished. They had plenty of fun throwing those balloons, getting wet and cooling off on a hot summer day. Best of all there were plenty of balloons left for each child to find!

For more fun water activities check out:

Water Table Play Props