Crafts for Kids: Sponge Water Balloons

Crafts for Kids: Reusable Sponge Water Balloons

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I’m not a fan of being hot. I’m also not a fan of spending a lot of money. And finally, I’m most CERTAINLY not a fan of bending down to pick up millions of pieces of rubber that have sprayed themselves halfway across my lawn – which is why I’ve had, for the longest time, an extremely adversarial relationship with one of my daughter’s favorite summertime activities: water balloons. But recently, I discovered the world of reusable SPONGE water balloons, and my whole world was changed.

If you have a pair of kitchen scissors, a bunch of kitchen sponges, some rubber bands and an hour, you can make yourself 13 sponge water balloons that will accomplish the exact same goal of keeping your kids entertained as those more expensive rubber ones – and you don’t need to have a single creative bone in your body to make these yourself. Best of all, the fun can continue for as long as they feel like throwing these things around, and your knees will thank you from not crouching down for an hour afterwards picking up all the pieces.

THINGS YOU’LL NEED

40 sponges (I bought this Scotch-Brite ocelo 10pk on Amazon; since each pack contains 4 sponges, this got me to 40, but feel free to get a cheaper brand because it really doesn’t matter)
13 rubber bands (the dollar store carries these, or you can save the ones your mail carrier brings for free because they don’t need to match)
A pair of scissors (I recommend kitchen shears actually, as they cut better)

INSTRUCTIONS

Take your sponges out of the package. They usually come in packages of 4, so that’s the example I’ll use in the instructions below. I happened to pick a bag that contained four different colors: pink, yellow, turquoise and navy. While your colors don’t need to be different, they do add to the aesthetic value, for whatever that’s worth.

Holding them in the direction shown in the photo above (portrait-style vs landscape), cut each sponge in half long-ways so you now have two long strips for each sponge. Then take each of the cut long strips and cut THEM in half another time. You’ll end up with that one sponge having been cut into four equal strips.

Do this for all your sponges. Then, stack your pieces so that you end up with strips that are four strips across by three strips high (see photo below). The color combination is completely up to you, and if they’re all the same color, that’s fine too – I just picked them at random.

Grab all the sponges with one hand and wrap a rubber band around them. Make sure the rubber band is pretty centered around the stack so that both sides are approximately the same length. Wrap the rubber band around for as many times as needed to keep it tightly clasped without worrying that it will snap on your hand.

Once you’ve tied all of your sponges together with the rubber band, you’ll need to delicately pull out each “petal” in a slightly different direction so that it becomes fuller-looking than it initially does. You only need to do this once because even after getting wet, they surprisingly maintain this shape and cover up the rubber band nicely.

Repeat for all remaining sponges and set them aside. When it’s time to use them, you have the option of either sticking the sponge water balloons into a giant bucket filled with water and letting the kids see who can get to them the fastest OR you can give each child his/her own smaller bucket and explain that once the water is used up, the game is over. I ended up doing that with my daughter and I was pleasantly surprised at how much longer that made the fun last because she actually started conserving her throws once she realized that she was otherwise going to be finished in about 30 seconds.

FINAL NOTES

I remember worrying at the beginning that 13 water balloons wasn’t going to be enough, but you have to keep in mind that these aren’t breaking – you literally pick them up every time they fall and relaunch them at someone else. Theoretically, that really means that you don’t actually NEED more than, let’s say, TWO per person, so having 13 should easily be enough for a family of 4 or 5 since stuff will be flying in (and from) all directions. My daughter and I did it alone and when we came in, we realized that there were 5 sponge water balloons we never even brought outside, so we definitely didn’t realize they were missing.

You absolutely will get wetter off the bat than you would with a regular rubber water balloon because a sponge has the capacity to hold a lot more water. As it keeps getting thrown around, it obviously loses a little bit each time, but you don’t need to dunk it back into your bucket for at least a half-dozen throws unless you’re just in it for blood and want to drown the other person.

I also really liked how you could launch these right at someone’s face and it doesn’t seem like you can actually hurt them, which isn’t the case with “real” water balloons. You can also turn the other person into a car wash and just lather up his/her arms and legs when you tire of throwing the balloons around, which was apparently extremely fun for my daughter for reasons I will never understand.

Ultimately, the biggest win for these sponge water balloons, though, is in their cleanup. Just the THOUGHT of bringing out rubber balloons would give me anxiety, and I’d spend so much time trying to pick up the pieces during the game to save myself time later on that I’d end up missing out on watching the sheer joy on my daughter’s face while she was playing with them. These silly sponges made the entire activity so much more enjoyable – for BOTH of us (and the environment too I guess) – that I had to share it in the hopes it does the same for you!