Make Your Own Super Balls

by Lauri Griffin | More from this Blogger

26 May 2008 01:12 PM

The craft store had a lot of children's craft kits on sale yesterday. We picked up several for three dollars apiece. All three boys agreed that they wanted to try the super ball kit first.

The picture on the front of the box showed regular spherical balls, but also geometric multi-sided and flower shaped balls. Inside the kit though, there were only two molds to make small and large bouncy balls. On the corner of the box it does say that it only contains two molds. Still, we were disappointed and felt that the picture on the front misrepresented the actual product.

Making the balls is really easy, and they do bounce. You snap two sides of the mold together. The kit came with a lot of different colors of polymer crystals in small bags. It was easy to cut the corner off the bags and pour the polymer into the molds. Once the mold is full, you immerse it in water up to the fill line for one minute. Then you remove it from the water and let it dry for three minutes. It was a little hard to wait for three whole minutes. Cracking open the mold is a little tricky, not exactly hard, but not easy. Once you open the mold, you have a ball. It was really fun to see how the colors mixed and swirled. Opening up the mold each time was a neat surprise.

The kit is recommended for ages three and up. I would not use this product with children that small. The grains of polymer do spill a little and the mold openings are small.

We liked that you could mix colors and that the balls came out bright and colorful. Our main complaint was that the kit said it made sixteen projects. This must mean that it makes sixteen of the smaller balls. Since we did a couple of larger balls, we only enough for two large balls and five little balls. We didn't have enough for everyone to make as many as they would have liked.

All in all, it was a fun afternoon project. I would have wished for more than two molds, and for a little more product. I would have also liked some science information about why this actually worked. It would be a fun party activity, but you would need several kits to have enough molds to go around.

Edited to Add: The directions say to keep the balls covered when not in use to keep them soft. And indeed, the ones that got left out of the plastic zipper bag got hard. Rock hard. Three inch in diameter rocks. Not a good idea at my house.

Also See:

True to Life Crayons From Crayola

Play-Doh - An Oldie but a Goodie

Stretch Those Craft Dollars

Learn more about Lauri Griffin

Lauri lives in Colorado with her husband and three sons. Amidst all the laundry and packing of lunches, she tries to keep parenting fun.

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JMcReynolds (95) 28 May 2008 09:15 AM

This is interesting. A lesson in reading the fine print, definitely. Thank you! We may look for these in a few years (or get them now and put them away for the next decade), but we have about 20 bouncy balls now, and the Daddy isn't crazy about them.

Lauri Griffin (2703) 29 May 2008 02:25 PM

You'd think I would have learned about reading the fine print by now....