With the 4th of July just next week, BBQ season is in full swing! And with BBQ’s at our house also comes a yard full of kids looking for games to play. And even though my boys have never played traditional croquet, they really love this modified version–a cross between kickball and croquet! It is an easy game to create and I picked everything up from the dollar store–so the expense was minimal.
To start, use a hack saw to cut the hula hoops in half.
These balls came right off the shelf at the dollar store, but seem really ugly to me in comparison to the fun colors of the hula hoops. So I gave them a good coat of spray paint…and waited… and waited for them to dry. I wasn’t sure how spray painting these balls would to turn out, but after about 2 days they were finally dry. (And I breathed a sigh of relief that the paint didn’t eat the balls or something.) After chasing rolling balls all over the place, I wised up and used the spray paint lids as stands to hold them in place. Plus it made it much easier to move the still wet balls without getting paint all over myself.
Using ScotchBlue Painter’s Tape I taped off the middle of the balls to paint a white stripe on, you know, so they looked a little more croquet-ish. After spending a few minutes messing with newspaper to cover the top and bottom of the ball, a stroke of brilliancy hit me and I realized I could just use ScotchBlue tape to cover it up! It work super slick and only took a minute for each ball.
I painted and waited for the stripes to dry. (Then my 3 year old dumped a bottle of bubbles on top of everything, but that step isn’t necessary.) Once they were dry, we simply peeled off the ScotchBlue tape and were ready to play.
To keep the hula hoops upright, I used small branches off a tree we are cutting down. If you don’t have the luxury of a dieing tree to use, dowels cut about 6″ long would work too. Push the sticks into the ground and slip the hula hoops over them. Easy peasy!
To hold interest a little longer, and to make it more challenging, use a stopwatch to see who can get their ball through all the hoops the fastest! My boys love a good competition.
Mark, Get Set, GO!!!
This post is a collaboration with ScotchBlue Painter’s Tape.Â
I LOVE this idea! Thanks for sharing, I am off to get some hoops! 🙂
This is absolutely adorable! I especially love how you did the balls 🙂
This is a fantastic idea!!!! Thanks for sharing! I also love the granola bars recipe, I just happen to have all the ingredients to make some today!
This is a great idea. Love that its cheap and easy to do….and great for small children!
What a FUN and cool idea Nik!! LOVE IT!
Great idea! My kids would love that. Your write up totally made me laugh though, the dumping bubbles and dying tree…LOL too funny. Thanks for the laugh (and great idea!) 🙂
This is SUCH a cute idea. I’ll have to do this for our 4th of July BBQ!
I’m the Editorial Assistant for Fun Family Crafts and I wanted to let you know that we have featured your hula hoop croquet! You can see it here:
http://funfamilycrafts.com/hula-hoop-croquet/
If you have other kid friendly crafts, we’d love it if you would submit them. If you would like to display a featured button on your site, you can grab one from the right side bar of your post above. Thanks for a wonderful project idea!