DIY Activity Centre

One of my earliest memories is of a Fisher Price cream coloured plastic activity centre with rollers, an old style telephone dialler and three men in a tub (rub-a-dub-dub). I suspect this memory is of a time before I was 3 years old.

As soon as Boy came along I wanted him to have one of these cot-side activity centres and in my haste bought the first one I came across, a very cheap Disney themed toy which has been on the side of his cot since he was too small to use it. In fact he got quite good use out of it, but these days it doesn't hold much interest for him. I was thinking of moving it to Girl's cot, when I spied a very cool home made activity cente online. In years gone by, when I worked in Special Education, I saw similar boards used as a sensory tool for children with autism and visual impairment.

We set out to Woodies for a big piece of plywood then had a great time picking out bells, switches, locks, doorknobs and other goodies to put on our activity centre. It took about three weeks from planning, through to the finished product, which still has a little room for adding extras should we want to at a later time. Both babies love their new toy, especially seeing their own faces peeking out from behind the little doors. Boy is particularly delighted with the shrieking alarm that sounds whenever his door is opened. Girl is not so thrilled with that part. Mammy is thrilled with the alarm's off switch.

The lovely part of the activity centre is that we all chipped in with making it. Boy helped to varnish the wood (he had very shiny hands for a couple of days there) and Girl helped us to see that leaning the board against a wall instead of screwing it down wasn't the brightest idea. But we won't go into details. If you like the look of this then please don't be put off. It was surprisingly straightforward to make and is customisable - use your imagination and add what you want. Everything is screwed on except the photos which are stuck on with masking tape, and the name tags which are stuck onto velcro strips.

Obviously, it is too big to be a cot toy. Nevertheless I hope it is one toy that both Boy and Girl will get some mileage out of and remember fondly for years to come.