Toy Boards

I posted about this on our FB page but since it has become one of Junior's absolute favorite things(possibly his very favorite) I decided to give it its own blog post as well. 

Junior loves his toys but if he his holding a toy in his hands he cannot see it at the same time.  Holding a toy gets boring quickly if you can't see what it is your playing with.
Over the years we have tried using toy bars(the baby type that you hang things on), and a giant pvc toy bar which he enjoyed but never was terribly crazy about.  After a lot of brain storming I thought why not something similar to his sensory trays but that hangs where he can see it. 
With his current  Star Wars obsession we have lots of the characters and space ships in various sizes.
I used a thick piece of foam as the base then cut a piece of fleece and put it over the fleece to get the right size and figure out where to add velcro to secure it.  I marked it so I knew where to come back and stitch on elastic loops(with velcro on the ends).  Along the top edge I stitched a piece of fabric and secured one side.  On the other side I put a strip of velcro.  I then grabbed some spare pvc tubing and made a tube to hang the board on.  I Slid a piece of one inch elastic through the PVC so I could hang the entire thing from Junior's Tripod.

The board hanging on the tripod, you can see how the elastic is inside the pvc(I added velcro along part of the length so the length can be adjusted as need )


Later I was able to find some road tape to add to the board so it looks like the cars are on a road.
  

Now Junior can hold toys in his hands and also see what he is playing with.  He absolutely loves it and will spend an hour totally focused on the board, looking from one toy to the other as he talks and plays using his imagination. I will see his arms shake as he tries to move the toys in his hands.   Oh how I wish I knew what story he was playing in his mind.  He typically requests one of his boards the moment he wakes up and any time he is relaxing and watching tv he also wants a toy board. 


You will notice that each toy has a black band around it.  Those are hair elastics and make it so much easier to attach the toys to the elastic and velcro loops that are sewn to the boards.
 

 This Star Wars toy board was the first one I made then I went back and made the car one after figuring out what did and didn't work and adjusting it.

Sometimes you just can't decide what to play with and need all the toys.

The toys can be taken off the boards and others added but we keep a couple boards loaded at all time so he can choose which he wants.  I plan to make a third so he has more to choose from and then swap out all the toys on them once in awhile. 

After watching him play with these I think the reason he loves them and was not ever crazy about the regular toy bars is that these make it much easier for him to focus on the toys.  With his other toy bars he could see everything else as he tried to look at his toy making it harder to focus on the object.  

Here is a short video of him "playing" with his toys.  May not be the typical way but in his mind he is playing with his toys just like every other kid.