Geometry & Kiddie Pools

One of the fun things we did this weekend was bring out the kiddie pool! :o) The kids enjoyed it with one of their favorite babysitters Saturday evening while Chris and I enjoyed an evening out. :o) (For the record, Hannah was so excited about her babysitter coming that when she woke up Saturday morning, she asked if we could eat lunch first so that she could come sooner!)

However, as anyone who has set up a kiddie pool knows, they quickly become an attraction for the local bug population as well as your children! :o) And so, Hannah and I used some household materials and high school Geometry this afternoon to create a very effective pool cover! :o) I'm going to include instructions here for anyone who'd like to try the same. :o)

Supplies:

1. Bubble wrap (You can buy it at office supply stores. We had put it in our yard sale pile!)
2. Scissors
3. Packing tape
4. Measuring tape
5. Marker

Instructions:

(Sorry I didn't think to get pictures of each step!)

1. Measure the diameter of your pool. (That's the distance across for those who are rusty on Geometry!) :o)
2. Cut strips of bubble wrap about one inch longer than your pool's diameter.
3. To determine how many strips of bubble wrap you need, measure the width of your bubble wrap and divide your pool's diameter by the bubble wrap's width and add one more to accomodate overlap. Our pool's diameter is 4 ft. and the bubble wrap is 1 ft, so I needed five strips.
4. Lay the strips long sides together with the bubble side down (flat side up) on your table and overlap the edges by about an inch. Secure them together with packing tape. (I used about 8-12" strips of tape and then overlapped each strip of tape by about an inch or so.) Handling packing tape in much longer strips than that becomes difficult.
5. Now here's the part where high school Geometry really comes in handy, and I almost made my life MUCH more difficult by not thinking of this!

• Once you have a big blanket of bubble wrap, carefully fold it in half (bubbles together) and then fold it in half again to find the center.
• From the center corner, use your measuring tape and marker like a compass to mark out an arc the length of your pool's radius (1/2 the diameter). For me, since my pool's diameter was 4 ft., that meant drawing little marks every couple inches that were 2 ft from the center corner.
• Cut along the marks you've drawn and unfold your blanket to reveal a nice circle just the right size for your pool! :o)

Put your new, insulated blanket over your pool! Bugs be gone and warmth/water stay in!

And here's my illustrious assistant who's very glad that the bugs will no longer be so interested in her pool! :o)

Hopefully this will be helpful to somebody! The idea for using the bubble wrap came from my husband--I just executed it this afternoon. And I love seeing such practical uses for high school math! :o)