I'm a crafty person. I like to 'jump on the tools' occasionally. I have a new toddler. And I’m living through a World-Wide pandemic in the world’s most lockdown city. So guess who couldn't resist making their very own busy board. Sure, you can buy an activity board from Kmart for $15 or a pre-made busy board from some clever person on Etsy for between $50 - $200, but no, I just had to make it myself.

Post-natal and pandemic anxiety aside, it turn out it's not THAT hard to make a busy board - it's just damned expensive. And if you want it to have a beautiful aesthetic that may cost you extra.

Like most people, my research started on Etsy and Pinterest. Reading the blog posts of many ambitious parents that have come before me. In essence though, all you need is a base and a handful of gadgets to attach to a surface. Or is it?! (TL:DR it is)

Granted this project was made all the harder for being in lockdown, it still took a lot more time and heaps more money than I had anticipated. I decided to make an A-frame “Sandwich” board style because our house doesn’t have many walls. If you have walls, a flat board is certainly going to be a lot easier and quicker.

A big thing to keep in mind throughout the project is child safety. Please consider this with every decision you make.

Equipment/Basic Hardware List for A-Frame

Pencil
Tape measure
Plywood - Premium Plywood 18mm thick (1200 x 596 mm)
Hinges - Hinge Butt 70mm
Stays - Card Table Stay 240mm
Jigsaw, handsaw or similar
Sander, electric or manual
Drill and drill set

The thickness of the board can vary from what is listed above but you want it to be thick enough that the screws won’t penetrate through the other side and become a risk for little hands.

To begin, cut your two panels of equal size. I measured the half way point, drew my line and cut there.

I already stuffed this part up and somehow my boards were not equal. So I had to remeasure. I did this by placing the boards on top of each other and tracing the line so I couldn’t get it wrong again.

Once cut and the boards matched, I used my electric sander to sand the front surface and to round the edges and corners. I wanted to reduce the risk for splinters and sharp edges for injury. I started with a P80 grit sanding pad, this is a medium coarse grit and I found it perfect for rounding the edges quickly. I then went over the edges and surface with P180 which is a finer grit and better for smoothing wood for the finish. I wore safety goggles and a N95 mask for protection.

I don't know the correct method for placement and alignment of hinges so I just lay the boards face down and rested the hinges on the back between them allowing a gap for the hinge pin section. I marked the screw placement and pre-drilled. This project has a lot of pre-drilling. Pre-drilling refers to drilling a hole in the wood that has a smaller diameter than the screw. Pre-drilling creates space for the screw in the wood and thus prevents the wood from splitting. I did not secure the hinges just yet. I secured the two pieces of board together at the end once I had attached everything. But you could do it now if you wanted to.

To secure the A-frame so it could sit ajar I used the ridged Stays as a chain or hook latch could be undone by a little person which could collapse and injure them. I didn’t actually know what a Stay was when I started this project. It was only after a desperate plea of Facebook and a 20minute call to the hardware store, that I found the product I was looking for. Thank you to all my incredible and clever friends for their help.

For the Stays placement I opened the board to a width that looked stable then I attempted to align the Stays to the centre part of the plywood. I marked the screw location with a pencil. I measured the distance to the bottom edge to align the Stay on the other side of the board. It is very important to pre-drill here as you are working on the thin edge with a layered, composite wood. As you can see in the photo this was the final step before I completed the board. But you can do it in whatever order suits you best.

And that is the quick, basic busy board A-frame that I made. I completed this part over a few nap breaks by the child. This part of the project cost around $55.00 for the three main products I had to purchase.

Bits and bobs and busyness

This is where you can have lots of fun. I had pictured myself wandering the aisles of Bunnings and Kmart and such selecting fun things and being very creative and ambitious. I had started in earnest to source things from family and did one shopping visit to a VERY suss discount hardware place. The kind of place that supplies surplus stock from the 1990s and products covered with a centimetre of dust and grime. It really screams CHILD FRIENDLY. And then we went into lockdown and my project stalled. For literally months my partner was encouraging me to complete the board. I found myself trapped in a tailspin of anxiety and procrastination. By not being able to simply go to the shops and buy what I wanted yet another part of my early parenting journey was being compromised. I did eventually pull my socks up and get on with it ordering the final supplies from Kmart, Officeworks and Bunnings.

I wasn’t very structured selecting items to attach but it is great to consider a balance of experiences for the child to ensure it is challenging them now and into the future, and that, as always, it is safe. This is where the project gets expensive. I would have loved to have sourced this material and alternate materials from family and friends and Op Shops to increase the life usage of existing products but it just wasn’t meant to be for me.

Here is my list of items

Even with this long list my board feels pretty sparse. There was so much more I would like to have added but the lockdown timing just made it too difficult. I read a blog where one person ONLY used black fittings. That would have been impossible given my limited patience for online shopping.

Buying all the bits and bobs probably cost around $100. I have linked the above list to Bunnings so you can see what the product is called - but it isn’t necessarily the exact product I bought. It’s not easy to search something you don’t know the name so hopefully this list helps those of you shopping from home.

Design and Assemble

I spent a bit of time laying the boards out side-by-side to make sure everything would fit and be able to operate as intended. I also wanted to make one side bight and busy and loud and the other side a bit more subtle in colour palette and having a few subtle challenges for the child to engage with. I am not an early childhood educator so I just took a stab at this with the limited availability of options.

This is the equipment to assemble

Double sided tape
Electric Drill
Hot glue gun
Eye Hook
Hand drill
Driver and drill set
Philips and Flat Head screwdrivers
Assorted screws
Paint
Paint Pen
Patterned tape

It's really up to you how you lay out and design your board. I spent a lot of time cruising Pinterest for ideas. I really liked the aesthetic of painting rounded squares behind the various bits so I ordered two VERY expensive Porter's sample paint pots. I didn't want to spend the money but I wanted nice colours. As the shops are locked down I could only order online so I just bloody ordered them.

I created the rounded square by using my quilting ruler to square off the object to an edge. I then had a 1/2 inch strip of carboard I used to trace a square around the outside of the object. Using a 5 cent coin I rounded the corners before painting. How trendy does it look?! Try not to be distracted by my use of imperial measurements and decimal currency.

There were a few difficult things to attach but most were straightforward. The bolt screws were super hard to get in even with the pre-drilling. I had to call in man hands to do the job much to my own chagrin. The Vacant/Engaged Indicator is actually slightly complex in that in real life it is operated from the back. With a bit of clever thinking I found a way to make it work but I had to cut a small block of wood to mount it onto so I could provide a recess in the back to give the spinning mechanism room to spin. It was a bit of a nightmare. I tried several different approaches but eventually I called in the man hands again to drill on an angle. This is not the safest method. We were also working on the dining room table so at equal risk of injury to person and damage of an asset. Do not recommend.

I embellished a few of the attachments to make them a bit more interesting. I dotted the gold paint pen on one of the castors, and on the backing behind the giant zip. I used this amazing Lumberjack printed duct tape that I bought in Walmart to cover the wipes lid and then put a photo of me and man hands underneath as a little surprise. I used the duct tape and some washi tape to cover the plant tags so they were not just plain white. You can really get creative but this was the capacity of my creativity at this time.

There were only a few things I purchased that I didn’t end up using. There were a few things I attached that I have or will change soon. There was a push button light that easily separated from its backing leaving the AAA batteries exposed for little fingers to pry out. Always consider the adventurous fingers of a toddler. If it has batteries, make sure the batteries are appropriately secured under a plate locked with a screw.

How you attach the bits and bobs are up to you. I decided on the following decision matrix:

If it has screw holes, use them
If you want it to hang, eye hook
If it has batteries, double sided tape
If it looks like it might not survive, double sided tape
If the toddler might put their weight on it, hot glue

In Conclusion

For a project that was delayed by anxiety and lockdowns, I managed to get that wonderful crafty feeling of satisfaction and a job well done. I nervously awaited presenting it to the child. Would he like it? Would it be engaging enough? I needn’t have worried. He played with one side for half a day before I showed him the other side. It’s been a few weeks now and he still loves it. I have restrained myself from showing him how to do things and have instead tried to encourage exploration. This will have the most value for lifelong learning. And when he is done with it - perhaps I can pass it onto another little learner. Bonus is that it is helping with his standing and balance skills.

Overall, it cost about $150.00

Would I do it again? Yeah, probably. I mean, look at that excited, yet, serious, little face.