Monday, 15 July 2013

Giant Water Pillow

Over the next 6 weeks my 4 children are home for the summer and so we will be blogging together. We will embark on a child friendly craft each week and blog about our creations.

As the hottest weekend of the year arrived we set out for some fun making a giant water pillow. Not really much creativity needed, but boy did we have fun crafting this enormous garden feature!

We spent a few pounds and about 10 minutes making this garden toy and 3 days later the children are still keen to play on it...


The only things you need to make it are two plastic sheets (we used 3m by 4m) and some duct tape, beautifully demonstrated by Molly.
Lay the two plastic sheets out flat on top of each other (as demonstrated by Jack) on the flattest garden you have. With even a slight decline you will find it hard to fill up.

Now roll the edges together. We rolled it over twice to keep the water tucked in and then stuck it down with duct tape.

It is important to ensure that the tape has no air gaps so take your time with sticking, and any bits you are unsure of, go over twice. You can see where we did the corner several times.
Finish all four sides with the duct tape, but leave one corner untaped so you can fill up with water from a hose.

Here are the children eager to start filling it up.


 Insert the hose into the hole and start to fill!












You can see the pillow is starting to take shape. It won't billow up as much as a pillow but you should get a reasonable amount of water in there.

I kept the hose going whilst the children played on it, and once it was as full as we wanted I used a final piece of duct tape to close the hole. I didn't do anything to permanent because I wanted to fill it the next day if necessary.
And now for the fun. This picture of the girls was before it was properly full and already they are having fun.

It is a very strange sensation, almost of walking on water. The children played for hours and hours. We put some soap on top which gave it a slippery surface which was fun too and just washed it off when we wanted it dry on top.

At the end of the day, hot and tired we all laid on top of the pillow and let the water underneath us cool us down. What a hugely fun way to make memories on a sunny afternoon!


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