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We came to Melbourne to visit our daughter and her husband and our new grandson. While visiting, my daughter asked if there was anything we could build on the back of the sink area in the kitchen as an Activity Station for our grandson. I thought about it for a bit and with my daughter's permission decided to build an Activity Exploration center out of recycled parts and some lumber and hardware from my new favorite Australian store--Bunnings!
The back of the sink area started out quite plain as you can see in the photo below.
One of the first purchases we had to make at Bunnings was some basic tools which my kids did not yet have. You can see most of what we purchased for tools in the image below. The toolbox was actually quite a good deal.
Next we collected some stuff to recycle into the Activity Center. Some of the odds and ends we used can be seen in the image below.
The first step in building the activity center was to run some strips along the back of the cabinets for attaching the activity boards, pegboards, and whiteboards. You can see the installed strips in the photo below.
Next I used rivets to attach most of the recycled materials to the activity boards. The goal with the activity boards was to have as many moving parts as possible. The following two photos show the two boards in the process of assembly.
Assembly of Activity Board #1
Assembly of Activity Board #2
We used objects with zippers, doors, spinning parts, gears, drawers, rotating bits, and many other active parts. Take a minute to zoom in on the two photos below to see the recycled components in the two activity boards. Considerable thought was expended to make sure the parts were attached quite firmly because kids can be rough on things. We also looked carefully at any parts that could be possible choking hazards to eliminate them and anything else that could be dangerous. You should consult a professional safety expert for child safety in the creation of any project such as this. The end result was a set of boards with maximum learning potential and minimal safety concerns.
Activity Board #1
Activity Board #2
Once the activity boards were completed, we added a couple of pegboards, a white board (on the left), and a couple of small magnet boards (far left) as seen below.
The true test of a toddler activity center is whether the toddler actually uses it. In our case, he spend hours entertaining himself with the different activities. The project has been quite a success with the grandson.
And that is how we spent our month of July--trips to Bunnings + recycled parts + time + patience = lots of fun.
Steve from DevelopingInnovators.com
