Inflatable Spaces in the Classroom

I was browsing my feedreader when I saw Ewan had del.icio.us ed the company that made this:

They make inflatable spaces and this one was made for Dalry Primary School in Glasgow as an ICT area. Gorgeous, but too expensive to have one in your classroom.

It reminded me a lot of the wonderful mobile planetarium that visited my old school.

Funnily enough I’d just spotted something similar but a bit more home-made in the photo stream of one of my Flickr contacts. Kids love all sort of dens and this one is just so great. I’ve made classroom dens from sheets, old cardboard boxes etc. before but this is just fantastic. I’m sure my ex-colleague Catherine would love to do this for her role play room space topic! Checking I discovered Liz has got full instructions on her blog:

perspicacious.org » our space habitat
I built this thing with my summer camp kids, and wouldn’t it be the coolest thing ever to build with your kids? It’s easy to do. All you need is a big sheet of plastic drop cloth, some duct tape and a fan. This bubble has a 10 x 10 ft floor, and is 6 feet tall. It used a 20 x 25 ft piece of 4 mil plastic and a standard box fan to inflate.

I think a smaller one could make a very cool playhouse. I paid $17 for the plastic, but a smaller one would be less expensive. My kids loved having this in the classroom, and were content to play cards and board games in it for hours on end. (Note: The air does get stale inside after a while. A little Febreze helped ours. Can’t do anything about the stinky feet, though.)

I so want to make one but I’m not in the classroom anymore. I wonder of my adult learners would like one