Make Your Own Splash Bombs

After school ended, we used a long car ride to make our family's Summer To-Do list. The kids had all kinds of fun ideas for summer fun, including: eating ice cream (check), going camping (check), swimming (check), taking hiking (check) and a lot more! 

One of the things they came up with that I really wasn't looking forward to was having a water balloon fight. First of all, who really likes filling all those balloons and hurting your fingers tying them?

Then they're all thrown in about 10 seconds and the fun is over, leaving brightly colored balloon scraps all over the yard to clean up before the dog or the baby eats them!

I'd been putting that particular Summer To-Do off until I saw these sponge water bombs on Pinterest from a blog by Inner Child Fun. In case you didn't know, I'm mildly obsessed with browsing through all the different ideas for crafts, food, DIY.

If you're not on Pinterest yet, let me know and I can send you an invite so you can have even more ways to procrastinate online, too!

However, I digress. The hardest thing about making these splash bombs was finding the right kind of sponges. I cleaned out the Dollar Tree's 10 three-packs and checked Wal-Mart, too, but there were only scrubby sponges–don't think you want to get hit with one of those!

Now I followed the blog's directions and used zip ties in the first attempt. When my daughter ended up with a big scratch on her neck from the zip tie, I changed them all out to heavy duty rubber bands. Much better!

Materials Needed

• Regular sponges...3 per splash bomb
• Scissors
• Heavy duty rubber bands

What to Do

1. Cut each sponge into 3 long strips.
2. Group 9 strips together.
3. Bind them together in the middle with the rubber band (you'll notice I took the pictures before I switched out the zip ties! Those really did seem like a bad idea even as I bound them up!).
4. Dip them in water and throw (over and over again without filling, tying or cleaning up balloons!).

Once we switched out the hard plastic zip ties, these turned out to be a great time for all of the kids!

What are some of the things your kids wanted to do this summer? Have you seen non-scrubby sponges anywhere?