Walk on the Water: Giant Sensory Squish Bag

This one has been on our list for a while now.  But seeing as it required a trip to Home Depot and someone generous enough to let us use their backyard, we just had not gotten to it yet.  Fortunately the start of summer camp (for both of us), the extreme temps, and our super nice buddies all came together last week.  We followed Go Kids Yourselves' (formerly The Mommies Made Me Do It) tutorial -- mom picked up the 2 pack of 125 sq. ft. Husky Plastic sheeting from Home Depot (3.5 mil thickness) and we used up our pirate, gold and regular duct tape.  We used just one sheet and folded it in half, overlapped the edges, and then duct taped that baby up -- twice.  We left a small hole in one of the corners for the hose and spread it out in the backyard.  And we snuck some water beads in there, too.  Unfortunately, mom didn't make to sure to place it on level ground -- one corner was downhill from the others, which was ultimately the demise of our squish bag.  It took about 1 1/2 hours to fill this sucker up, so leave yourself plenty of time for the fill.  We got some minor leaks almost immediately and mommy and our friend scurried around duct-taping it up.  It seemed like it would hold, but with all the pressure on the one corner, they could tell it was a matter of time before it busted completely open.

So they taped up the corner and let us have at it.  Even with the leaking, we got in a good amount of time playing on it.  But once we started jumping, holes developed in the top, too.  And then it was more like a ghetto swimming pool, but it was a million degrees out, so it was kind of perfect.

It seems like lots of other people have made these with the same thickness of plastic sheeting and had no problem.  So we're not entirely sure what happened.  The thicker sheeting was significantly more expensive, though, so I'm guessing we won't be getting that.  We have another sheet and we'd like to  try it again - although our poor, generous buddies have a large patch of brown grass now in their yard, so probably not there!