Easter Egg Stress Ball

So as part of Keas, I spend my life looking for cool activities to do. Ones that link into something that they can learn and that we can talk about.

This week, it was Easter. Because it was coming up. And they knew about it. Plus chocolate is exciting. We try to avoid religion, not because we have too (scouts is a Christian organisation, I am of the belief that if you send your kids to a Christian thing then expect Christian stuff). But it's definitely easier not to risk getting complaints. Plus (from a students point of view) parents are quite a bit more protective over 6-8 year olds than the 14 year olds I make do prayers on camp.

Anyway! The activity we did was to create Easter eggs that doubled as stress balls!

You need:

• Flour
• Balloons
• Sharpies/ permanent markers 
• Funnel (for the flour) 
• the size doesn't really matter, balloons stretch! 

So it's actually really easy. The idea is to full the balloon with the flour. Tie it up at the top (a same as you would if it was full of air) and then decorate it with the sharpies.

Things we learnt:

• Blow up the balloon first. They were quite hard to fill up if you didn't blow them up first. But make sure you fully deflate it first 
• Don't squeeze the bottom! Sounds obvious, but there were at least 3 kids that went home white from getting flour in the face
• Have enough funnels. We had 8 Keas working on it, and only 4 funnels. I didn't expect it to take nearly as long to fill as it did, so there were a few impatient kids 
• Don't start playing immediately. We did. Cause we are 6 and they are fun. Mine ended up having none of my drawings on it by the time I got home. And I had a black hand. 

Another way to do it (which we didn't, cause we have no money) is use different colours of balloons. You put the first balloon inside another one of a different colour. Then you cut out holes in the outer balloon.