LEGO Balloon Race Cars



What better way to start the day than to build Lego balloon race cars?

Our homeschool enthusiasm has slowed to a crawl lately.  Maybe it's because one gray day follows another, every day is cold or colder, and we have to spend 20 minutes putting on layers of clothing just to walk to the car.

I spotted this idea on Pinterest the other night and we just had to do it!


3 Supplies Needed:  Extra bucket o' Legos, Balloons, Creative Kids


After a half hour or so of constructing our own individual race cars, (ok - so Bram and Kylie played while I built all three of ours, but that's to be expected)


we built some pretty awesome cars (if I do say so myself),



but then we needed to come up with a way to attach the balloons.




  We built up the back of each car and created a hole in each of the back stacks to insert balloons.





It is also important to insert the balloon with the air escaping out the back.  Unless you want the car to go backwards. We ended up taking out our drivers and steering wheels because they didn't accommodate the blown-up balloons well.  One of our drivers experienced a reverse airbag punchout.  Blew his hat off and everything.  Poor guy.


There was some difficulty in keeping the back stack attached while blowing up the balloon, so we detached a section of the stack, inflated the balloon and pinched it shut, then stuck the stack back together and released the balloon.

If you have more than one adult or older child present, you could race cars simultaneously. 

Since there was only one of me, we "raced" by sending one car off at a time, then we marked each person's distance with an individual marker. 

The car with the least weight and highest back stack won - it went about 24 inches!


What a fun indoor activity.  Yay for Legos!


More Challenges:

Can you beat a distance of 24 inches? 
Build the highest car!
Build the longest car!
Create the car with the best theme.
Can a car be powered by 2 balloons?
Make a working car from the least number of pieces
Build a working car from the highest number of pieces

Counting, measuring, physics, engineering, goal setting and creativity are all important skills that are used during this activity, but I'm not going to tell my kids about that part.  I just want them to have fun! 


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