Welcome to easy Summer Boredom Busters for kids! Today we’re having fun with sponges!
I found this fun idea at Make and Takes today and wanted to give it a try!
Supplies:
- Some colorful household sponges (3 sponges per ball)
- Scissors
- Dental Floss or zip-ties
- Paint
- Blue construction paper
- Some willing participants
Directions:
Step 1: Cut the sponge in quarters. I started by cutting one sponge in half lengthwise.
Next I cut each of those halves in half again so you end up cutting 4 pieces per sponge.
Tip: You can also cut the sponges along the shorter side to create smaller balls!
Step 2: Next we piled up all our pieces and mixed the colors up.
Step 3: Gather 12 different colored strips and twist tight. You’ll need a partner to help you with this step as it’s very difficult to hold and tie all by yourself!
Step 4: Using a piece of dental floss, string, or a zip-tie, tie the center of the sponges to secure in place.
Step 5: Fluff up your sponges!
Step 6: Bring your sponges to the pool with you this summer, or in the bathtub for some added water fun! You can also fill up some buckets of water and add the sponges. Have kids do a sponge toss, you can either have them try to toss the sponges into a bucket for points, or toss them to each other! Just be prepared to get a little wet! But who doesn’t love a little water spritz on a hot summer day!
Sponge Painting:
For some alternative sponge crafts, grab some tempera paint and create some cool art with your sponges, they make great texture. Might I suggest a Great Barrier Reef painting?
We cut some smaller chunks for the painting for detailed areas, then used the small sponge balls for larger areas. The kids loved the textures they created with their sponges!
Here is one of our finished pieces:
Enjoy your summer sponge fun!
Looks great! Thanks for sharing :o)
Hi Erica!
This is such a cute and inexpensive craft idea, my kids will love this! Thanks for sharing 😉
Keri ~ A homeschooling mom of 2, loving that curriculum isn’t just black and white!
What tape do you use for the pictures? How do you get it off without ripping or pulling off part of the paper? Thanks. My kids loe to draw and paint. This looks like a lot of fun.
masking tape is a really good tape to use, but also you cant use just regular paper. I would recommend watercolor paper (found at many art specific stores, also Michael’s, ect.) hope this helps!
Oooh, I love it! Great idea to cut them up like that!
Very cute. Is that a pineapple under the sea?
Excellent project suggestions! I have a question – what type of paint is that? I used to be a teacher, and just told my bosses how much paint I needed for our classroom. Now that I’m homeschooling all the “washable tempera” paint I find is just about see through, it’s so thin. Your paint looks great on paper!! We would love to have washable paint that is good quailty. We use not washable tempera to get good coverage, but it has permanently stained our cement outside where we paint 🙁