When you blow up a balloon yourself, it just hangs from the string. But party balloons from the store float straight up. Why? They have a lighter kind of air in them, a gas called helium. So those balloons can float about 20 miles up into the sky, almost to outer space. And they can lift things: In the craziest record ever set, 300 8-foot-wide helium balloons lifted a whole 4,335-pound house into the sky! We hope the owners weren’t in there…
Wee ones: Party balloons come in all different colors. See if you can find 1 thing of each rainbow color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. How many things do you have?
Little kids: If you have a whole bunch of balloons, and you pop balloon number 1, then balloon number 3, then balloon number 5…which number balloon do you think you pop next? Bonus: If you counted just the odd numbers in a bunch of 7 balloons, what number balloons in between did you skip?
Big kids: If just 1 of the 300 balloons lifting that house had popped, how many balloons would have been left? Bonus: If a helium balloon can lift 15 pounds, how many balloons would it take to lift a 300-pound pig so that pig could fly?
Answers:
Wee ones: See how many colors you can find! If you can find an item for each, you’ll have 6 things.
Little kids: Balloon number 7. Bonus: 2, 4, and 6.
Big kids: 299 balloons. Bonus: 20 balloons, because 300 / 15 = 20.
