Have some bored kids on your hands?

Need a quick way to entertain them using materials you have on hand?

Are the kids about seven years old or older?

If you answered yes, yes, and yes, this is exactly what you were looking for: Q-tips® Darts Knock Down. It's simple carnival-style fun for everyone. Well, at least those old enough to not inhale the Q-tips® darts while blowing them through a straw.

What you need:

6 Q-tips® per child

1 straw per child

6 disposable bathroom or kitchen cups

What you do:

With scissors, snip off the ends of the Q-tips® to make the "darts." If more than one child is playing, have each mark his or hers with colored markers in a chosen color, to eliminate the inevitable "he's taking all mine" complaints.

We used flexible straws, so I cut off the straw at the flexible part to ensure the dart slides through without interference.

Line up the cups at straight-on blowing height (which may require players to lie on the floor or play on a table top), a fair distance from the player. Stack three on the bottom, two in the middle, and one on top.

Place a dart in the straw and take turns blowing darts through the straw to knock down the cups.

Blow...

And blow...

And chuckle at how much more challenging it is than you might have expected.

Winner is the one who can knock the cups over quickest.

Bubby and I later realized adding numbers (for real; not Photoshopped like these) to the cups was a great idea. Like these... with one more on top because we also realized later that adding a sixth cup made it better, hence the suggested six cups in the materials list, not five as pictured.