DIY Popsicle Stick Trivia Game

This summer has definitely gone down in history as one of my absolute busiest ever. At one point I was feverishly looking for a new house, checking the MLS every morning and running out to check out any houses that looked good online with fingers crossed that I wouldn’t get a “contract pending” notification before I even made it there. All that ended when I found my dream house but ultimately didn’t get it because it failed inspection. In all honesty with as quickly as things move, finding that gorgeous house and having a closing date set and all of that was such an amazing and triumphant feeling that when it fell through, it was totally heartbreaking.

I was also working like mad trying to get as much stuff done here on the ol’ blog so I could go on vacation with my nephews like I do every year. And when I didn’t get everything finished up, I decided that it was okay and went on vacation with a lot of projects in limbo because, in general, I’m trying to get better and not stress over every little thing. Just a few days back from vacay, we had a family emergency and my sister and I followed an ambulance to the hospital and then spent the better part of 16 days there. With this hugely scary emergency on our hands, I let go of all worries of work and just went with the flow taking care of what needed to be taken care of as little fires popped up all around us.

But now things are settling back down again. There are a bazillion doctors appointments coming up but, luckily, my sister is a nurse and she’s sticking around to provide the kind of care that I just cannot. I mean, I can figure out how to pay the light bill but I in no way, shape, or form am capable of giving daily shots to somebody.

During all of the health hullabaloo, my nephews were still in town and since only so many people can visit the ICU at a time, they spent a whole heck of a lot of time at the house alone. Even hanging out at the house the boys were still pretty darn stressed because they were scared and though we did our best to keep them in the loop, always worried about what was going on that they weren’t able to see. So when I was back at the house I wasn’t worried about work then, either. Then I was worried about allaying any fears the boys had and showing them a good time to keep their minds off of anything scary.

We went to Incredible Pizza in Conroe, like, a bazillion times and we loved it. First of all, bumper cars, mini-bowling (SUCH FUN) and arcade games. Secondly, they make my very own gluten-free pizza AND dessert for just the price of the regular ol’ buffet like everybody else pays. And I never once had a reaction or got sick. Straight up, man, we all LOVE THAT PLACE. We also went out to eat at different places because the boys love to eat out. Like, not just get the food and go home, but actually eat in the restaurant.

And one night after they worked super hard helping their dad build a new fence for my parents’ house they were antsy to do something. Anything, really. And so we grabbed the Popsicle Stick Trivia Game I had made weeks before and went and ate at a brand new (to us) Mexican restaurant and just enjoyed being out and together and having a nice time.

This interesting jar of popsicle sticks is one of those projects that takes a bit of effort and, in all honesty, is a bit tedious to do. BUT the end results are amazing because it’s a game, so it’s fun, but it also imparts little bits of wisdom here and there that you can use in random conversations. Trust me, when you have a ton of useless (but interesting) knowledge in your head you can always, always start up an interesting conversation with just about anybody :)

And finally, to the point of this whole darn post, today I’m going to show you just how to make your very own Popsicle Stick Trivia Game PLUS after the tutorial directions, I’m going to share with you the 200+ highly researched and curated trivia questions that we have on our sticks. Just sign up for our newsletter and those puppies I worked so hard on will be all yours! ‘Cause, straight up, I spent DAYS coming up with questions and finding the answers for these popsicle sticks and I doubt you’ll want to do the same. BUT, I feel I should warn you that I did cater these questions to my nephews quite a bit. They’re boys and so we have one question that at would turn their faces red and illicit crazy giggles every time they thought about it after having read it aloud in public…

Question: How many times does the average person rip a fart per day? Answer: Fourteen. See. Totally pandering to the teen male audience with that one.

So, yeah, while I tried to keep most of the questions fairly generic so everybody can enjoy them some are a bit more mature (they are teens, after all) and some of them are, like, super science-y because they’re smart kids totally interested in that.

Question: What color is octopus blood? Answer: Blue. It is copper-rich where red-blooded creatures have iron-rich blood. 

But there are also tons of questions that will just give you an interesting tidbit of information that you and yours can learn and use in everyday conversation to totally impress with your vast useless knowledge.

Question: In 2007, Scotland spent £125,000 to have a new slogan developed for the country. What is that slogan? Answer: Welcome to Scotland. <— Bahaha, right? This one cracks me UP!

Ready to turn some popsicle sticks into a fabulously entertaining and educational game? Let’s get after this DIY Popsicle Stick Trivia Game, then!

For this project you will need:

• Jumbo popsicle sticks
• Paper to match 
• Scissors
• Mod Podge
• Squeegee tool
• Printer – I LOVE my HP Envy
• Jar or box to hold the game (I repurposed a tub from my cat’s food!)
• Lots and lots of trivia questions (download our 200+ Free questions here)

For this project, I grabbed several packages of jumbo-sized, pretty colored popsicle sticks from the craft section at Walmart. This is definitely the cheapest route to go, but if you don’t want to head into town to go to the store, you can always conveniently purchase them online for more $. Also, you DEFINITELY want the bigger popsicle sticks that are more like a tongue depressor at the doctor’s office than a stick you would actually find inside of a popsicle because they’re a much better size for a few lines of text.

I went with the brightly colored popsicle sticks because they’re far more fun than the regular beige wooden ones and because I can be all sorts of matchy-matchy, I purchased some Astrobrights color printer paper so I wouldn’t have any white strips of paper standing out all white and bright and whatever.

Now, if you’re going to find your own questions, you can go ahead and get after that already. If you want to use the questions I have made, I totally feel you. Scroll down to the bottom of this post (or just click here) and you can download 200+ Trivia questions. And, added bonus, I even have several different file types you can download. There is a PDF that you can print all of the questions, as is. Then we have a Word document, rich text file and a regular ol’ text file, all of which are editable. So you can go through and change questions, add to them, delete the ones you don’t want your kids to know, etc. to your heart’s content. And, honestly, there might be a question or 2 you want to edit out so I strongly suggest reading them all prior to putting them on sticks if you are concerned your kids might learn something untoward.

Once you have your questions ready to go, print them out on your colored paper, making sure that you have the question AND answer together on the same color. Using a pair of scissors or a paper cutter, trim the paper on either side of the questions and answers like you see above.

Now if you didn’t compile all your own questions this is where the tedium begins. Working a page at a time, finish snipping out the questions and answers for one page. Just FYI, this is so much easier to deal with for finding the correct pairs than it is if you cut out all 20+ pages of questions at once… With your Q’s and A’s together, apply a super thin layer of Mod Podge onto one side of the stick.

Smack your question on this first side and apply another trace of Mod Podge to the top. See how you can barely see any up there? That’s EXACTLY what you want or this is going to get stupid sticky and messy…

Using a craft squeegee apply a good amount of pressure to the end of the stick, over the paper strip, pulling the squeegee to the other end of the stick. Remove the excess adhesive from the squeegee and set the stick off to the side to dry for about 2 minutes. It honestly won’t take long because there is so little adhesive that needs to dry. Continue the process tacking the answer onto the other side of the popsicle stick and allow to dry.

Keep on keeping on until you have adhered all questions and answers to your sticks. Allow the sticks to sit out at least overnight for the Mod Podge to fully cure.

Once good and dry, toss them into a container or box to keep them all together. My container I happened on by complete accident and it is the PERFECT little container. If you have cats and they like treats, I actually used the tub that came with my Marla’s Churu creamy treats. It’s plastic so we can travel with it without worrying about glass shattering and it has a super nice handle. You can also use a box or something else you find at the store. Whatever works for you, works for me :)

The way we play is super simple. We carry our tub of popsicle stick trivia questions around with us to places we might get bored… the restaurant while waiting for our food, the hospital waiting room with nothing going on, places like that… Passing the tub around, questions are asked and whoever guesses the question correctly gets to hold on to the stick, counting as a point. Any that are guessed wrong get tossed back into the tub and, if pulled again becomes a race for the others to proclaim the correct answer they recently learned.

Maybe it’s totally nerdy but we LOVE this game so much. I don’t know how many times I heard “should we bring the Popsicle Stick Game?” to which my reply was ALWAYS “yes”. Though this little DIY game took quite a bit of time when it was all said and done (because 200 questions don’t research themselves, people) it was well worth the effort. And every time I hear them casually mention a cool fact they learned from the game, well I fill up with such pride that one of my little DIY projects is not only entertaining them but teaching them, too!