When we went to pick up a pool noodle for Gracen’s marble run water slide, she originally fell in love with a flower-shaped noodle. While I knew it wouldn’t be the best fit for our marble run, at $1.25, I knew we would eventually figure out a way to put it to good use.
It was my first time seeing this sort of pool noodle, and all I knew was that I wanted to slice it up to create tons of little individual flower shapes.
So that’s just what I did. Just like when slicing a pool noodle in half vertically, I found that using a sharp, serrated knife and a sawing motion worked best. I sliced ours about an inch thick, but you could do them any thickness you like – even varying thicknesses would be fun!
As I chopped, Miss G ran the ready flowers over to her blow up pool and tossed them in!
It’s such a simple thing, but they looked so pretty and inviting dancing around on the water’s surface. (I’m already picturing them in bath tubs and sensory bins too!)
I think Miss G agreed, because she immediately jumped in {despite the freezing cold water} and started splashing around like mad!
When the splashing had subsided a little bit, Grandma Charlotte showed Grae how the flowers could be used as building blocks.
It’s definitely easier in still-ish water, but it’s equally fun when in or out of the pool. Towers can be built…
Pyramids can be built…
And ‘trains’ can be built too! Of course, the possibilities are really endless when it comes to building structures – even when they’re floating ones.
Now the only question is how I’m going to convince Brad that heaps of pool noodle flowers are a Kuwait necessity… I mean with the heat and the amount of time we spend in and around water there, they are, aren’t they? ☺
Upon returning from my first ever weekend (and overnight, actually) away from Miss G, she immediately asked if we could open the last of her 
She pulled the items out one by one and this is what we found inside… A box of sugar cubes, some white glue, and several pieces of thick cardboard. The note inside explained that the materials were for building structures, and Gracen wasted no time getting started.
First up, she told me she was going to build ‘biiiiig’ towers. ‘Big, big, big, big, biiiiiig ones’. And that she did. Layering a little squeeze of glue between each sugar cube allowed her to create several tall towers.
When her towers reached the height that satisfied her expectations, she asked for help with making a ‘rectangle’. I squeezed the glue out onto the cardboard in a rectangular shape, and she place the cubes along the path. We continued this pattern several times and finished off with a top layer that made the structure look castle-like.
With our sugar cube box running low, we decided we had enough left for one last structure. Grae decided on a pyramid with a fence around it (the fence was very important) and so that’s what we did.
I really love this activity because it can be very open-ended – the possibilities are endless! Grae loved it so much that she was quite disappointed when the sugar cubes were gone, so we’ll definitely be trying it again soon!