Your kids will love making these simple snowman snowball shooters and launching marshmallows and cotton balls across the room! Measure which one goes farther and record your data on the free worksheet.
How do you have a snowball fight when there is no snow? You build a “snowball” launcher and send the snowballs flying! Plus, your kids get to stay in the warmth inside instead of freezing outdoors with this fun activity.
With this quick and easy snowman snowball shooter that takes minutes to put together, your kids will have lots of fun for hours shooting marshmallows or cotton balls. And of course, we turned it into a winter STEM activity so that the kids can go through the scientific method while launching snowballs!
Snowball Fight with Snowman Shooters
Materials:
- White paper cup
- Balloons
- Scissors
- Black and orange marker
- Marshmallows
- Cotton balls
- Free snowball shooter worksheet
- Measuring tape or ruler
Instructions:
1. Carefully poke a hole in the bottom of the paper cup with scissors and cut out the entire bottom.
2. Tie the balloon.
3. Cut the bottom of the balloon off.
4. Stretch the balloon over the bottom of the cup. Your snowman has a hat!
5. Use the black and orange markers to decorate the snowman’s face on the paper cup.
6. Put a marshmallow in the cup, pull back the balloon, let go and watch the marshmallow fly!
7. Measure how far the marshmallow flew with the measuring tape or ruler. Record the distance in the snowball shooter worksheet.
8. Try shooting a cotton ball. Did it go farther than the marshmallow?
Aren’t these paper cup snowman shooters adorable? My kids had so much fun shooting marshmallows and cotton balls. I do want to note that if you have younger kids, they may pull on the balloon too hard and the balloon would pop off the cup. You may want to use tape or glue to adhere the balloon to the cup to prevent it from happening.
At first, we followed the worksheet and measured the distance at which the marshmallows and cotton balls went. But of course, things got a little crazy and before I knew it the kids were running around the house shooting cotton balls at each other.
The good news is that cotton balls don’t hurt! It turned out to be the perfect screen-free activity to get kids moving and active indoors.
FOR MORE FUN WINTER STEM ACTIVITIES, CHECK OUT:
What a cute idea! What size paper cups did you use?
I used 8 oz but you can definitely use different size cups!
What size balloons work best? 7in, 9in, 12in?
It depends on the size cup you use. I used the standard 12″ one.
it looks very interesting!!
so i made it today for my students . thank u 💓
oh how wonderful thanks for sharing!
Great idea for Christmas
Would white pom poms or cotton balls work better? Pom Poms are a little heavier, would that not work as well?
Hi! Did you experience any trouble with the balloons sliding off the cups? I saw some DIY launchers online that suggest hot gluing or duct taping the balloon onto the cup, but I’m putting together Take N Make STEM kits and don’t want to have to transport duct tape or assume kids have access to a glue gun at home.
You can certainly tape the balloon to the cup, but we didn’t have issues with the balloons sliding off the cups. I think it depends on the age of the kids; younger kids would probably try and pull the balloon really hard to shoot the marshmallows farther and accidentally pull the balloons off. But older kids shouldn’t have this issue.
cute idea – thanks