For this learning project post, I decided to use youtube again. This has become a favourite of mine in learning how to make balloon animals. I have found quite a few people on YouTube that make tutorials on how to make different balloon animals. I have found that I quite enjoy using Micheal Floyd the best when it comes to making balloon animals. He goes slower than most of the other videos I have found, as well he has a great angle of the camera when showing how to twist the balloon. I have also found that I really enjoy using YouTube because I am able to pause the video and rewind it if I need to see how something is done again. I have found that I am rewinding and rewatching the videos a lot while making the balloon animal.
For the actual creation of the horse, I have started to get the hang of creating legs as I have done this multiple times throughout my creations of different animals. This has become one of my favourite pieces for creating the balloon animal. I found that creating the head was also an easy piece as well, as this is similar to quite a few of the other ones that I have created.
For me though the harder piece of this balloon animal was creating the mane which was the second balloon attached to the balloon animal. I struggle with creating the right size of bubbles and also the same size of bubbles needed to create this. However, with quite a few attempts I did achieve the horse’s mane. I really enjoyed creating this balloon animal.
If there are any animals that you want to see me create please let me know I definitely need new ideas!
Cyber safety was a big thing when I was in school, but not till I was in high school. I remember using computers in elementary school for learning how to properly type and play math games online in the computer lab but that was the most they were used for. I do remember using MSN when I was in grade 7 or 8 though.
The way I remember they ingrained the safety around the computers was scare tactics. They would tell stories about people being lured into traps through the computer of people pretending to be our age. They also talked about sharing pictures online and how whatever you put online is there forever. I remember that being the one thing they repeated over and over. “what you put online… is there forever”. Honestly, I think back to the last post about Twitter and why I may be hesitant about sharing things on there because of the scare tactics they used when I was in school. So to say did it work… I would say yes in a sense.
Although thinking back to when I was in high school I remember friends of mine would use Omegle, which is a site where you can webcam chat with people around the world. I thought it was a really cool premise when I was in school because most of the time you were connected with people your own age. But there were times when it became weird and things turned into what you didn’t expect to happen. The premise of being able to connect with anyone from across the world via webcam is a cool thing but it can be dangerous if you are not careful with what information you share with them or what you show. Not only that but there are people out there that can hack into your webcam and can access it at any time… which I think is really scary. The world we live in now with what people can do with a computer is mind-blowing. therefore, cyber safety needs to be a bigger role in schools especially at younger ages, because the age of children going online is becoming younger and younger.
In a long way, I would say the scare tactics worked in the sense that they have made an ever-lasting fear in my mind about posting online and my cyber safety as an adult is smarter than it was when I was in high school. Although I don’t think it worked as well as they were hoping it would work because there were still people sharing videos with people around the world via Omegle. There has to be a better approach to teaching cyber safety. What are your thoughts? Do you think scare tactics work? Is there a better way?
I just started using Twitter for this class and am still on the fence about it. I have always had a fear of posting online. It’s a very irrational fear but still fear. I have Facebook, and Instagram and I think the only posts I have ever made on there were pictures. I don’t think I even put a caption to my pictures. That being said being pushed outside of my comfort zone has been a great thing because I am able to do something that makes me uncomfortable which in turn helps me grow.
In my future classroom, I have never thought about using Twitter as a tool in the classroom till this class. I want to teach younger grades so I don’t see myself actually using Twitter as a tool in the classroom. However, as a professional development tool, I see myself using it for my entire career. I have found many great people on Twitter to follow that post a lot of great tools for in the classroom.
I find Twitter to be a useful tool because it is a way to connect with people around the world on various topics. Although, I am still reluctant on using Twitter. I have this irrational fear of sharing something I don’t mean to. I have always had this fear of all platforms of social media and sharing things. I have never shared something that I didn’t mean to share. However, I have seen horror stories of that happening to people. I think that is where the fear has come from. Although I am getting better at Tweeting every day. Still not quite there but working on it. I am feeling more comfortable Tweeting.
This week I tried using a different source to learn how to make balloon animals. I used Tik Tok this week. I found quite a few videos on how to create different balloon animals. At the beginning of this journey, I started off making balloon animals that the children at work had asked me to make. I have officially finished making all the balloon animals for them, therefore, I had to choose other animals that I haven’t yet tried. So I scrolled through Tik Tok and decided to make a lion
Upon making the lion I ran into a struggle. I first watched the video to see how I would have to twist the balloon, I thought to myself this looks pretty easy! I was very wrong. There is one part of the lion where you have to make 6 consecutive bubbles all of the same size and then twist the balloon together at the end with the first balloon. When I first watched this video I thought it would be easy. However, trying to make 6 consecutive bubbles while having the first one not unravel is not easy. The first attempt was not a success, pretty much all the bubbles at the beginning of the row came undone. So I tried again, and the same thing happened. I then tried another 7 times to attempt this. I had to actually put the balloon down and walk away from it for a little bit before I attempted it the last time when it finally worked for me.
I found that what I initially thought was easy was not as easy as I thought it would be. When I finally came back to the balloon to try for the 10th time I finally achieved it! I had to hold the balloons in a certain way twisting them into my arm to hold onto them so they didn’t come unravelled. This finally worked and I continued onto the rest of the lion. The rest of the lion was basically the same twisting techniques that I have learned in the past with the leg making and the neck and body.
One other thing I learned this time was how to make a sort of curly tail. You take the balloon and shape it into an S shape and then squeeze it repeatedly and when you let go of the balloon it holds its shape and creates a sort of S-shaped curl. Once I finished making the lion I then grabbed a sharpie and made a cute little face on it and the lion was done.
This week I decided to make two different balloon animals. I made a dinosaur as well. This dinosaur was a one balloon creation. I have attempted dinosaurs in the past and they did not turn out so well. I had reservations about attempting this dinosaur this time.
The dinosaur turned out to have the same sequence of a number of small twists consecutively. I thought to myself about how difficult this would be and went at it with the same technique I used with the lion putting the bubbles I had already made into my arm to hold them together. This worked great.
The dinosaur turned out to have the same kinds of bubble twisting as the lion with the feet and the same twists as the first dog which was my first balloon animal ever. The dinosaur was definitely easier to make than the lion was for sure.
I learned some new techniques this week on how to make consecutive bubbles without allowing them to fall apart while I make the rest of them. This is one thing I will be using in the future of my balloon creations.
Well, I tried, and I sort of succeeded at making a video on Canva, by succeeded I mean there is a video that I created…is it good though that’s up for debate.
Let’s dive into the review first, I really enjoyed using Canva. For someone who is technically illiterate, it wasn’t too hard to navigate. There are many options as to choose from I chose to make a video. One of the downsides to the app is adding videos in. You have to record yourself in the Canva website to add a video, you can’t take a video from an outside source and add it in. That being said, I am not technical, therefore, there may be a way to do it I just couldn’t figure it out. That being said, that was the only downside to Canva. Like I said before it was easy to navigate. There are also great options for adding different text into the video that are pretty cool. There are many templates to choose from that are completely customizable. Overall Canva is a great tool to have and use. One thing I did not know and later realized by playing around with the website is that there is an app for Canva for my computer! Which I am now downloading. I will definitely be using this app in the future!
Now for the overview…there are many great features within Canva. One of them being how many options there are. There is an option for making a whiteboard, within the whiteboard option there is a basic plain whiteboard option as well as, brainstorming whiteboards, flowchart whiteboard, team whiteboard, and a planning whiteboard. These are all completely customizable. Another option there is the presentation option. Within this there are many options including a plain presentation that has two sizes, talking presentation, mobile-first presentation, and a brain storming presentation. Another option is the video making option which is the one I went with. There are also many options to making videos that include Facebook video, video message, mobile video, and YouTube video. Not only do they have multiple ways to create but they also have an option for social media. This includes a Facebook post, and an Instagram post. There are many more choices for social media but, if I listed them all this post would be way to long! That being said there are many many options for customizable creations.
With using the Canva it is pretty simple. The first thing you need to do is to choose what exactly you want to make. That being a presentation, a video, a Facebook post. Let’s say we choose to make a poster. You click on the poster template then on the left side there is an immense amount of customizable premade posters that you can choose from, however, if you want to create one from scratch that is also an option. Once you’ve created exactly what you want, you then can print poster which is an option on the top right upper corner. There is also an option to share your creation as well as copy the link to the Canva creation. These options are all on the top right corner of the website and app. There is one thing that you have to make sure you choose before copying the link. Once you click link you need to select whether you want the link accessible by anyone who has the link or just you. By selecting just, you, you are making it inaccessible to anyone else to see. Within the share option there is also an option to share to social media as well as to download your creation.
Tips and Tricks
One of the really cool things you can do with Canva is choose a font you want and customize it to whatever you would like it to say. Here is a screencast showing you how to do this. Another trick to using Canva is to add pre-made videos into your video which you can then place font on top of. This was something I played around with. Here is another screencast on how to do this. Another feature that Canva has is lengthening and shortening videos. For instance, if we use the feature of using premade videos into our video or presentation some of them are longer than others. If you don’t change the length of the section of the video, then it will be as long as the video that you posted into it. Here is the screencast on how to do this. I’m sure there are many other tricks to using Canva, however, I’ve never used it before, and these are the ones that helped me through making my video.
Now for the fun part, the actual video I created! My video now that I’m looking at is not necessarily progress of what I’ve learned so far because it is something that I have already learned to do, however, this is the one animal that I have recently learnt how to make by memory. Which is why I decided to use the balloon dog as my video. The video is a little dry as I did not know how to add sound to the video. Hopefully, the next time I use Canva I will be able to use sound with it.
If you’ve used Canva before and have other tips to using it please leave a comment and let me know. I want to get better at using this app as I think it will be very useful in my future classroom. I think it is a great tool for the classroom because there are many options to choose from. Whether you’re having your students create a poster for an assignment or a presentation or you want to show them a how to video as I have chosen to do. You can record yourself doing whatever you want to teach them and show them a video of it instead of standing in front of the classroom like you normally do. Yes, it is a lot of work, however, it is worth the work for the product you get out of it.
This week I decided to start at the top of my list with a simple (not so simple) snake. I had a couple of kiddos ask for snakes, so I had a lot of practice on these. Some turned out exactly how they were supposed to, others well, I’ll go more into detail about that.
First, the snakes. I watched a video on how to make a simple snake. I then came across one that was a little more complex than your average snakenot to mention, that the kiddos asked for something cool not boring when it came to the snake. I also wanted to challenge myself, instead of making an easier version. In this particular video I used to create the snake; I watched it a handful of times because there were quite a few steps to creating it.
Before I actually attempted to create the snake’s head, I started with the final step of creating the snake (the body). Which yes, seems backward, but it was actually the harder step in the creation of the snake. In this step, you have to wrap the balloon around your fingers deflated, then slowly add air to the balloon to create a “simple” spiral effect. There are many ways to go about doing this as I saw in this video. The easiest is having someone help you to do this (I did not use this method) which is probably why my spiral did not turn out “the best.” The other method in the video is to use something circular to wrap the balloon around and then add the air into the balloon, I also did not use this method. The method I did use, however, was the one they showed in the video of the snake. Which was to wrap it around my own fingers, adding air with a balloon pump that is remarkably very small, and hard to use with one hand. This step took me quite a few attempts before I got kind of the shape that I was looking for. Once I completed the body I moved to the head.
One thing I have learned thus far in my balloon animal making is that when they say to leave extra room at the end of the balloon deflated, add even more than they say. This doesn’t seem like a very important thing, but it does make or break the way your balloon animal turns out because if you do not leave enough air at the end of the balloon then you risk there being too much air at the end of the balloon, which will cause the balloon to pop. It is extremely frustrating when you are basically done with your animal and you are twisting the last piece of the balloon and “pop” there goes all your hard work. The video on how to create the snake is only about 7-8 minutes long, however, when you are not a “skilled” balloon creator that 7-8 min turns into 15-30 min. Watching and re-watching the video to make sure you have twisted the balloon the right way, and thinking to your self “why does mine not look like that?”
These snakes that I created definitely were a hit with the kiddos. I remember bringing them to those who asked me to create the snake for their balloon animal, extremely shocked at how I turned balloons into something like that. The sad thing is, the next day they come to me and ask for another one because theirs had “popped” because well their balloons, or as one of them said, “I wanted to see how tightly I could squeeze it before the snake’s head popped!”
I haven’t decided on where I am planning on taking this balloon-creating career yet, but I do know that one of my co-workers had asked me to make balloon animals for her kiddo’s birthday party in mid-November. I have thought about making something pretty insane out of balloons, like a house or something bigger. For now, ill stick to balloon animals, and practice my skills until I come across that special something.
If there are any balloon animals that you come across that you think I should attempt to make, please let me know in the comments!
Hi, my name is Taylor Derbowka. I was born and raised in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. I took my first year of university as a distant student in Yorkton, then moved to Regina to complete my Education Degree the following year. I am in the early year’s Education program focusing on Kindergarten-Grade 5. I hope one day I am a grade 3 or 4 teacher. I am in my fourth year of university, and although I’ve taken a couple extra years to finish my degree, I’m on my way to completing it this year.
I am not familiar with technology in the classroom, as when I was in school this wasn’t a thing. We used chalk or whiteboards to do all work and learning, and computers and phones were not allowed in the classroom. Although I am really excited to get into technology use in the classroom. Technology in the classroom is a great way to stay connected with students, and because everything is done online nowadays, we need to include this in our classrooms.
When it comes to blogging, I am definitely not a blogger. I have had to blog in past classes, and I was never great at it. I never knew how exactly to write a blog post. Whether it was to sound like I’m talking to someone about something or if it is supposed to sound more professional like how I write a paper. However, throughout this class, I am hoping to enhance my ability to blog as I do see its purpose.
I am looking forward to using Twitter in this class to stay connected and share resources. Here is my Twitter.
Welcome to my journey of learning how to make some pretty interesting things out of balloons. I first started wanting to learn how to make things out of balloons a couple weeks ago. Flashback to August 29, 2022, when we were planning on having a party for our kiddos, a farewell party on the 31st of August. I was thinking about what would be exciting and something different that the kiddos haven’t experienced at daycare before so, I decided to make balloon animals. I picked up some cheap balloons from the dollar store (they only cost me 2 dollars) and got to work at home practicing making a simple dog I watched this video over and over again till I could make the dog by muscle memory. Although I was fairly certain I could make a worm out of a balloon already
Upon making the balloon animals at the daycare I soon found that buying such cheap balloons makes for a lot of them to have holes in them as well as they pop extremely easily. So, I thought there had to be better balloons out there. So, flash forward to about 5 days ago when my mom and I were talking about what I should use as a skill for this project, we discussed a couple things one was learning Ukrainian, another was origami, and then we finally thought it would be awesome to learn how to make balloon animals. I watched a couple videos on how to make different balloon animals and most of them require 260q balloons. Although upon watching these videos I had no idea there were different types of balloons. I started looking at stores that sell 260q balloons but, my mom right away was already looking on Amazon for balloons and without my knowledge, she ordered me a pack, which shortly arrived the next day! Yesterday, I decided that since I’m going to be practicing making balloon animals why not make them for the kiddos at work, I mean what am I going to do with 50 balloon animals! I asked all the kiddos in my group what type of balloon animal they wanted and of what colour, wrote a list and that was my baseline on what types of animals I was going to learn, needless to say, children have the most creative imagination as to what animals they picked! This could get interesting!
Taylor Derbowka ePortfolio 