Pool Noodle Crafts and Games

You don’t even need water for these pool noodle crafts and games!

I have a confession, making things with pool noodles is really fun. After making a Pool Noodle Ottoman I kept thinking of all the other outdoor fun we could have with pool noodles. Fun that doesn’t even require a pool!

Could I surround myself in pool noodle fun? Create a whole afternoon of pool noodle crafts and games? Yep!

To start I wanted a pool noodle game. Littlest is really into Tic-Tac-Toe lately. So we worked on creating a large scale version of the game with pool noodles.

As you can imagine the O’s are fairly simple to make. They each use one entire pool noodle bent into a circle and taped together. I used clear packing tape. That’s really all you need for that. (I will mention that the pool noodles from Oriental Trading are nice and thick so they hold the circle shape well.) You will need five O’s.

Then you need to make the X’s. You could just tape or zip tie two straight pieces together, but I wanted something that laid flat like the O’s. I cut 15 inch sections and then cut out a notch in the middle of each piece. My pool noodles were 15 inches long and about 8 inches in circumference. Doing a little math told me that meant they were 2.5 inches in diameter. The diameter is the measurement I needed to know to find out how wide of a notch to cut in my pool noodles. (I made sure to point out to my kids an example of using math for crafting.)

I measured in 6 1/4 inches from each side and made a mark. This gave me a 2.5 inch section in the middle that I cut out for the notch.

You’ll need 5 X’s, so that means 10 of the 15 inch notched sections. Once all 10 pieces are cut glue them together.

We used some additional pool noodles laid out on top of our outdoor rug to create our game board. Littlest and Oldest Twin played the first game.

All along I’ve been telling you to hold on to the small pool noodle pieces leftover from our projects. That’s because you can use them to make a pool noodle garland!

While you could string them together through the holes already in the pool noodles that makes the garland a lot thicker and you need more pieces to create a long strand. So I used a long needle and some string and string the pieces this way. I alternated my colors to make a pattern and I love how bright and colorful the finished garland looks.

The garland goes really well with my Pool Noodle Ottoman! Now we’ve got seating, a game, and some decorations all made from pool noodles.

What have you made using pool noodles?

Did you miss the Pool Noodle Ottoman that I made? See how I made it here

Thanks to Oriental Trading for providing the pool noodles for our summer fun and crafting