This summer was HOT in our part of the world. Since we don't have air conditioning in the house (with the exception of 1 room) that meant we were DESPERATE to find ways to keep cool. While browsing Pinterest I kept coming across tutorials for water blobs. They looked like crazy fun, so we decided to give it a try.
I combined these 2 tutorials to make a water blob for each of the kids. hello, Wonderful. and homemadetoast. From cutting my plastic, to having both of the blobs full of water and ready to play took about an hour and a half. Most of that was waiting for them to fill with water.
I went with 3 foot wide plastic sheeting in 4 mil thickness; Truthfully, because the store was out of the 10 foot size I'd seen in several tutorials to make one giant blob. In the end though, I think it made the project a lot better. It was the perfect width for each kid to lay on, it was more easily managed on my ironing board, and if I had gotten the 10' wide roll and wanted to make individual blobs it would have made for a lot more cutting. The 3' wide roll saved me that.
Since my kids are roughly 3 feet tall, these didn't need to be very long to accommodate their height. I cut my plastic to 8 feet long, then folded it in half on itself so I had 2 blobs roughly 3' x 4'. If you want them longer, just cut a longer strip! If you can trust your kiddos not to run all over the plastic while you're trying to cut and iron, go ahead and try it any time. For us, that's not the case, so I made sure to prep the blobs during nap time so they were ready to play with as soon as the kids woke up. The ironing directions are perfect from homemadetoast. Follow them to the letter and you can't go wrong.
Some notes about the project:
- Make the hole for the hose larger than you think you need. I made mine about the width of the hose, but forgot about stretching for the height. It was a pretty tight squeeze getting it in and out of the blob, but it did work.
- Clear out even the tiniest sticks in the yard if you want your blob to last. If the kids had just laid on the blobs, we'd probably have been alright. Avery insisted on body slamming the blob though, which meant a bunch of tiny leaks on the underside of the blob by the end of play time--all of which coincided with a small stick that I didn't bother to clear out. Even with the leaks we had SEVERAL hours of play time. (I left them in the yard overnight and it still had water the following morning!)
- Use LOTS of duct tape to seal the corner where you left the hole for the hose. That's where you'll get the most leaks. Layer it up to make it last. You can also use duct tape to patch any other leaks that spring up while you play, but it adheres better to dry plastic.
- Use the iron method!!! I also saw several tutorials where folks just used duct tape to seal the edges. A friend of mine confirmed (after we tried this) that it just leaks like crazy. They had to throw their blobs away after one use. We were able to use our several times before Avery slammed too many tiny holes in the bottom with the sticks.
Overall, this was definitely a win. It kept everyone cool and the kids had a lot of fun. You'll also most likely have a ton of plastic sheeting leftover. I used some of ours to make an i-Spy bag for a road trip to the lake!
