Orbeez Stress Balls or How We Rocked Mini Society Part #1

What's a mini-society?

I try to parse the teacher's email and attached documents. and begin to understand, it's a store. When I was elementary school, we called it the Store.

Well, elementary school has changed quite a bit and also stayed the same.

This hasn't been an easy year for our son. He switched schools, he was diagnosed with several learning disorders, and his teacher and he just aren't a good fit.

I immediately felt protective over him. With a year full of problems, I just wanted this project to be a success.

He wanted to sell stress balls.
Now I had never made a stress before and there were a lot of errors along the way. Like a lot.

So don't be like me, start with the cool stuff, and skip the tears.

Supplies

Obeez or water balls
I bought a knockoff brand that sent 50,000 for $10. The colors were not as bright as Orbeez, but they were still good

Clear balloons
I did not find that these were actually clear, they had a bit of a tint. I ordered mine from the wedding balloon section and got 144 for $7

Empty plastic bottle
Funnel

Assembly

Hydrate those Orbeez.

I let my kids run with this. Obv.
If you've ever wondered what a bathtub full of Orbeez looks like, here it is.

Fill 'em Up

Fill an empty bottle with a stress-balls worth Orbeez. We used well over a cup for each stress ball.
The kids in M's class really responded to the larger size, they felt like they were really getting their money's worth.

I used a funnel and an empty water bottle for this part

Transfer the Orbeez into the balloon

In order to get a good sized stress ball, the plastic bottle is necessary. Hand stuffed stress balls are time-consuming and don't look nearly as good as a solid baseball-sized one. Hand-filling them is frustrating and messy as well. So don't skip this.

Blow up a balloon, twist, and cover the mouth of the bottle.

Flip the whole thing upside down, allow the balloon to untwist and the Orbeez will transfer easily into the balloon.


Release the extra air and tie off the balloon.

Clockwise from top center: 1. Rainbow stress balls: no alterations, just regular Orbeez
2. Magenta: all colors of Orbeez with one drop of hot pink food dye
3. Bright blue: cool colored Orbeez with one drop of blue food coloring
4. Cool colors: Orbeez only, sorted by cool colors
5. (center) Warm: Orbeez only, warm colors

Don't forget to Squish for the full result

Variations

A variety of stress balls offers the opportunity to sell several to a single customer. This was a key to M's success. One kid bought 6 different stress balls from his store.

Some variations we tried

Warm and Cool

Sort the colors by warm and cool for orange and teal balls

Sort by warm and cool

ta-da!

Food Dye

We created variations using food dye as well.

The center one here is the regular Orbeez, the left one has a single drop of blue, the right one has a drop of magenta.

Left: one drop of blue
Center: unaltered Orbeez
Right: one drop of magenta