Turn down the lights and let the fun begin! Kids love the change that dim lighting brings to a room and will have a blast knocking down (and standing up again) the water bottle pins. Minimal set-up with an ROI as big as the kids’ smiles.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Library programming is designed to be fully inclusive. Age limits may be implemented in certain programs to ensure that program content fosters appropriate developmental markers.
Accessibility: Use a larger, soft ball for participants with motor challenges.
Use two liter bottles instead of water bottles for vision impaired participants.
Mode: In Person
Staff Energy: Moderate
Ages: 5-12
Cost: low
Length: 45-60 min
Ideal Attendance: 15-20
STEAM Practices:
✓ physics
Tags: games, whole body, low cost, kids, high energy
Credit: Kate Davis
Supplies:
(Commonly on-hand supplies are not included in cost breakdown.)
60 glow sticks ($1.25/5 pk) $15
60 empty water bottles ($5.88/35 ct.) $11.76
30 Wiffle balls (or other larger, lightweight balls) ($29.95/36 pk)
painters/masking tape (2 rolls)
Total Cost: $3.77/participant
Instructions:
Kids bowl! They’ll take turns rolling the ball and setting (and resetting and resetting and resetting) the “pins”.
Staff Know-How
Planning, Set Up & Facilitation
- Ask your coworkers to save plastic water bottles for you.
- Peel the labels off the water bottles.
- An hour before the event, snap glow sticks and insert them into bottles. Put caps back on bottles.
- Create lanes with masking tape. Lanes can be sized according to your space, but I found that 15 foot by 3 foot lanes worked well.
- Set up bottles in a triangular shape at the end of each lane.
- Turn off (almost) all the lights.
- Put on some groovy tunes in the background.
Pro-Tips
- Kids will innately create teams and have one person bowling and the other person resetting the bottles and rolling back the balls.
- Set an expectation that the balls are for rolling, not throwing.
Marketing & Promo
Book Suggestions
Glow in the Dark Bowling Book List Template
Resources are availabe in the SHARE catalog as of May 2025.
Phoebe and her unicorn. Volume 9, Unicorn bowling (Simpson, Dana)
Nintendo Switch sports [game (Nintendo Switch)]
Instant sports [game (Nintendo Switch)]
The case of the glow-in-the-dark ghost (Preller, James)
Way to glow! : amazing creatures that light up in the dark (Regan, Lisa)
Reusability
You can collect water bottles prior to the event to reduce/omit the cost of buying new. If you do have to buy new, you can encourage your colleagues to hydrate and return the bottles to you.
The balls can be reused for other programs and outreach events.