Sponge Bombs

I mentioned in my post about the DIY Leave-in Conditioner/Detangler that my little brothers had their Jaycees State Wrestling Tournament this past weekend. We were SOOO proud of them! They both wrestled well and won the 2nd place trophies! They were pretty happy to end their season feeling like they did their best!

One of the many reasons they try to wrestle so well during the season is that they know, if they do well and get qualified to compete in the state competitions, along with that competition is a hotel stay. And, of course, Dad isn't going to get a hotel without a pool! :)

Going to a pool without any toys is fun, but bringing a few toys along always seems to bump up the enjoyment a little bit. I had my beach bag of toys (goggles, dive sticks, arm floaties, etc.), but I saw these sponge bombs on Pinterest and knew I HAD to make them!

I'm so glad I did because they had so much fun with them! They were worth every penny and more! (Not that they were even expensive to begin with!) I really wish I would have gotten a picture of the kids playing with them. They even had a bunch of kids that they had never met joining in on the fun. At one point, they had about 15 kids playing! They began forming teams and took each end of the pool, made up rules similar to dodge ball, and started chucking them at each other. (If you got hit, you had to sit out. If you caught it, the thrower had to sit out and one of your teammates got to come back into play. The team that had the last person standing was the winner.) If you don't want to do something like this, check out the Inner Child Fun blog and see the game that they used their sponge bombs for.

Since the kids were whipping them at each other quite forcefully, a couple of the sponge strips did fall out. It really wasn't a big deal because they just brought them to me, I rewrapped the hair elastic around, and they were good as new. They were being really rough with them though, so you probably won't even have to worry about that happening to yours. :)

I only brought 4 sponge bombs, but they all shared and made them work. I wish I had made more, but if you don't have the money or time, even a couple sponge bombs give the kids tons of fun!

Before I tell you how to make them, I have to show you my brothers' proud faces (and our proud parents, of course)! :)

This is Paul with his 2nd place trophy!

And this is Isaiah holding his 2nd place trophy! 

I'm so proud of these boys! All 5 of the Nighthawk wrestlers that went to this tournament took either 1st or 2nd! Okay, okay....enough of my bragging. I'll show you how to make them now. :)

You're going to want to gather up some new household sponges (I'm assuming you probably don't want to use your nasty old ones) and some Ouchless hair elastics.

Cut your sponges into strips. Try to keep them all similar in size.

You can choose to do vertical strips or horizontal,

depending on how large you want your sponge bombs to be.

Gather up about 9 pieces and stack them like so.

You can do all one color, or multi-colored.

 (Maybe do a set of color-coded sponge bombs for team games!)

Squeeze the center.

Wrap the elastic around the center as tight as you possibly can, as many times as you can.

Pull the strips around to shape to help shape them to look more rounded.

There you go! You're all set to get wet! :)