Blowing Up Balloon Animals

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Dan McLellan and I'm with Expert Village. Now we're going to talk about how to inflate a two sixty balloon by mouth. A two sixty balloon is the standard type of balloon for making a balloon animal. Now a lot of people, when they first look at the balloon, their first instinct is to stretch the balloon out if they need to inflate it by their mouth. But I'm going to advise you not to do this. The reason why this is difficult in the first place is the balloons are long and narrow which makes it difficult to get the air through the narrow part of the balloon. So if you're stretching it out, all you're really doing is making it longer and narrower. The real trick to blowing the balloon up is actually blow really hard. But I'm going to give you a few tricks to help you in the process. Now, be honest it will take a little bit of practice. Most people can not get this on their first try. And if you're probably under the age of thirteen, I would suggest that you don't do this because your lungs are not big enough. So what you want to do is grab the balloon by the top where the lip of the balloon is, and then with your left or your other hand, hold it about forty percent of the way down. This hand you?re going to be actually pulling down as you push the air into the balloon with your mouth. Now there's some muscles that you're going to have to use here. One is your diaphragm, and that's your muscle right here where the top of your ribs come together and the other is your cheek muscles. So you want to be able to get just a little bit of the balloon to get air in it to get started and then keep pushing air in. Just like this. Now, once again, just like the pump, I didn't fully inflate the balloon. I just put enough balloons in there to get the bubbles I need for my creation. I left quite a bit uninflated and the reason why is I do make my twist along the balloon. I'm going to be pushing the inflated air into the balloon, into the empty part of the balloon, and that's what is going to prevent it from popping."