Summer Activities: Sponge Ball

I’ve seen this activity several different places — over at Erica’s blog, Confessions of a Homeschooler and also at Betz White’s blog. The kids were pretty excited to make these… especially since we had an activity lined up for the right afterward!

These are super fun for playing catch in the pool or just tossing around in the yard. You could get them wet and play hot-potato or use them like you would for a water balloon toss (taking a step back each time).  My kids thought these were really pretty and each one chose different combinations of colors.

All you need is sponges and some strong string.  We used string from an old kite, but someone else used dental floss. I thought that was a great idea!! We definitely needed two people to tie these together. We used nine strips of sponge to make each ball.

One person twisted the sponges together as tightly as possible while the other person wrapped the string around and tied it off. We did that twice to make sure the strong held it all together.

Math Sponge Toss:

I thought these would be perfect for a math fact game a couple of weeks ago. I wrote up some math problems on 3×5 cards and taped them on the garage. Each of my kids had a different color with challenging math problems — so LD did percentages/fractions, DD did multiplication/division and ED did addition.  They got their sponge ball sopping wet and threw them at a card.  If they managed to hit their own card, they could answer the problem and keep the card for a point. Each of my kids had their own color to throw at (with different math problems to solve). They really loved enjoyed math that day, let me tell you! (You can click here to visit that post for the other fun math activities we did that week: 4 Fun, Active Math Fact Games)

Be sure to check out the entire Summer Activities Series! We have lots of indoor and outdoor activities to share with you all summer long – Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays! And our Saturday Summer Read Series will highlight books from many different places, time periods and cultures.

See you next time or at our Homeschool Facebook Page.