Water Fun With Grandkids

It’s hot where I live.

Real hot.

Hot like 100 degrees.

Or hotter hot.

It’s so hot, that it behooves me to have a fun new water activity for the grandkiddos.

Yes, it behooves me!

Instead of running through the sprinklers, how about running under a ‘shower?’

Like a pool noodle shower?

What in the world is that? you ask.

It’s where water squirts out of a pool noodle instead of the shower head in your bathroom.

It’s where grandkids cool off on hot summer days and where they have loads of fun!

To make the pool noodle shower, I cut a pool noodle in half so it wasn’t so long.

My husband used an awl and poked lots of holes all over in it. He had a wooden dowel that was about the same size as the hole at the end of the noodle. He put that in one end to plug up the hole and then put duct tape over the outside of the noodle to keep water from coming out of that end.

We shoved the hose in the other end of the noodle. We hung the hose over a branch of a tree and turned on the water. That’s all it took to make a pool noodle shower!

The grandkids enjoyed running through the water and having lots of water fun.

You know, once you make something, you learn lots. And, after seeing how things turn out, you think of ways to improve it and make it better. At least that’s the way I am!

Here are my lessons learned. We think that we should have used a thicker tool to poke holes in the noodle. We think that if the holes were a little bit bigger that the water would squirt out a little further. As it was, the water only squirted out about 10 inches.

Second thing. My husband only put two strips of duct tape across and one around the end of the noodle. After a while, water leaked out around the edges at the end of the noodle. That was okay because that was just more water for the kids to play in.

However, because the leaks were fairly big, I think that it affected the water pressure inside the noodle. Maybe that had something to do with the anemic squirting out of the water, too. So, I would have put more duct tape overlapping the layers to prevent the water from leaking out.

Then, the noodle hole was a tad bigger than the end of the hose. That made it so the hose didn’t stay inside the noodle. Luckily, we had another hose that had a fatter end and stayed in the hole better.

If the hole in the noodle is too big and the hose doesn’t stay inside it, maybe you could stuff a wedge or something around the hose to help it from falling out of the hole.

Last year, I got a pool noodle from the dollar store. The hole in that pool noodle was smaller. So, instead of purchasing a pool noodle from Wal-Mart like I did for the pool noodle shower, you might want to check your dollar store first. One from there might work better.

Here’s a teeny video of playing in the water. It very briefly shows the pool noodle sprinkler. Then, it shows the grandkids running through the pop bottle sprinkler (which you can read about here). Lots of water fun going on at our house!