Boom Boom Balloon

Boom Boom Balloon may be the most awesome game that ever happened. Have you heard of it? O. M. G. The kids went crazy for this game! Rumors were circulating around the school of the awesome game that was happening in the speech room. Kids were rushing in for their speech time shouting, "Do we get to play the balloon game?!?"

 

And yes, they all got to play it. And I got to play it too. Ten-plus  times a day for an entire week. That is about 50 popping balloons. Suddenly popping. A surprise every. Single. Time. Needless to say, my nerves were shot by Friday.

Anyway, enough about me and my (now suppressed) nervous system. 

The way the game works for speech, is that after a turn practicing whatever speech/language target they are working on, the student gets a turn. The student then rolls the dice to see how many clicks they have to push in the stick. They then carefully push in a stick until it clicks. Each player tries to keep the balloon from popping. We all watch as the balloon changes shape and hope that the next click won't make it pop. 

Talk about anticipation! 

Boom!

Here are some kiddos enjoying the game. They do actually have real faces, but I have to block them for privacy, yada yada. This pic is also a good view of how the game looks before we start pushing the sticks in.

 

Something that was really funny about this game was how each group reacted. I yelled/screamed each time the balloon popped (yep, about 50times. I looked pretty cool).  Some kids were gung-ho and loved their turn and wanted high numbers and were using strategies to get the balloon to pop sooner. Other kids were timid and didn't want to take their turn and sat as far away as possible from the game. Two students on the Autism spectrum refused to even play or let me set it up. I had to keep it in the box and store it in the closet. So funny.

I really think your students will love this game, so give it a try. It is only about $15bucks. An affiliate link for Boom Boom Balloon is provided on my sidebar for your convenience. 

Boom!