While Bandit struggles to get Bingo to clean her teeth, Chilli and Bluey are playing with balloons. Chilli wants Bluey to take a bath, but Bluey wants to play a game called "Mum School", where one plays at being a mother-in-training. She names her balloons Kiwi, Wingdust, Lightning Bolt, Dronigan, Pearl, and Greeny (the one helium balloon) and pretends they're her kids, having Chilli pretend to be the teacher.
Bluey has her "children" watch a movie, with Greeny "holding Mummy's hand", but gets frustrated with "Greeny" getting in the way. She puts "him" under a pillow and then simulates an argument between him and "Wingdust". Chilli improves of Bluey scolding "Wingdust" for insulting "Greeny", but not of her saying that "he" had it coming for being hit by "Greeny".
Chilli claims that Bluey's "children" need some exercise and offers them "a nice swim in the indoor pool". Bluey takes the balloons upstairs and pushes them along with a roll of wrapping paper. Chilli notes that this would be a bad idea if the balloons were real kids.
Then, Bluey gives the non-helium balloons a "swim" in the bathtub and puts "Greeny" in a box as punishment for floating away. Chilli tells Bluey to stop hitting the balloons with the wrapping paper, then she observes Bandit (who she says is "in Dad School") getting Bingo to brush her teeth. He reckons she's being ornery because she's hungry and takes her downstairs for food.
Chilli gives Bandit top marks and decides to give Bluey another go with "Greeny". She pretends that "he" just wants to explore and weighs "him" down with a "G" magnet. Then, she climbs into the bath with her balloon children. After the bath, Bluey and Chilli dry off the balloons, but "Greeny" flies out the window. Chilli cheers Bluey up by saying that "Greeny" will be okay because "he's got a good mum", and that, yes, Bluey did fail Mum School but all mothers fail Mum School sometimes.
This episode provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Bluey is this to her brood of balloons at first. She allows "Greeny" to hit "Wingdust", hits all of them with a roll of wrapping paper when they don't walk in a straight line and keeps "Greeny" underneath a crampet laundry basket when he is unable to stop wandering off. Of course, since it's all for pretend and Bluey doesn't know any better, it's a harmless example.
- Aerith and Bob: Bluey's fake balloon kids have some normal names (Dronigan, Pearl) and some made-up names (Kiwi, Wingdust, Lightning Bolt, Greeny).
- Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: Bluey makes "Wingdust" call "Greeny" a "cushion head", then later she calls herself that.
- Bittersweet Ending: Greeney flies off never to return, and Bluey basically failed at Mum School. On the bright side, Bluey is happy for her "child" that Greeney gets to satisfy his wanderlust, and Chili comforts that even the best mothers initially fail Mum School. As such, Chili assures Bluey that tomorrow, they can try again.
- Black Comedy: Bluey corrals her brood of balloon children by hitting them with a wrapper paper roll and confining the least manageable to a laundry basket cage.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each of Bluey's balloon "children" is a different color. The red one is Kiwi, Wingdust is purple, the yellow is Lightning Bolt, Dronigan is colored pink, and Pearl lives up to her namesake. And no guessing which one is Greeney.
- Companion Cube: Bluey pretends some balloons are her kids.
- The Compliance Game: Chilli comes up with the bath-as-pool part of the game to get Bluey to take a bath.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: See Abusive Parents above. Most of the children are balloons that were blown up by hand, but Greeney is a helium balloon, making him 'wander', unlike his siblings. At several points, Bluey singles Greeney out for disobedience, isolates and punishes him for something that, while it's seen as bad behavior from the outside, is actually well out of his control. It's like an abusive parent singling out their disabled or neurodivergent child from their 'normal' siblings and punishing them for what is, in this case, essentially a birth defect. Again, the whole thing is make-believe, but still.
- Freudian Excuse: Bluey eventually sits down with Greeney and tries to figure out why he keeps floating away. She figures out that his floating is because he has wanderlust and wants to explore (of course, the real reason is because it's a helium balloon, but the wanderlust is Bluey's imaginary reason).
- Meaningful Name: What else would Bluey name a round, white-colored balloon other than "Pearl"?
- Mistakes Are Not the End of the World: Chilli assures Bluey that "we all fail Mum School sometimes".
- Mocking Sing-Song: Bluey makes "Wingdust" sing "Greeny's a cushion head!".
- Stink Snub: When claiming Bluey needs a bath, Chilli says, "I can smell you from here!".
- Parents as People: Bluey falls under this trope in her own simulated way. Her treatment of her balloon "children" borders on comically abusive at times, given she's too young to understand acceptable parenting skills yet. Still, she does care for them, and is sad when the rowdiest child leaves.
