Sensory Board

I have spent the last few months designing and constructing a sensory board, aka gadget board, aka busy board. It consists of various items you can find at the local hardware store or local Wal-mart; such as an office chair wheel, or spring door stoppers, or sliding locks, etc. The purpose is to give my son something to play with and keep him occupied, but also to foster his learning and development by challenging his mind with puzzles.

It has been slow going up until today, as I had to figure out what I wanted to put on the board and then go to dozens of stores to find it all. I then had to design the configuration of the items and then cut holes and notches to secure them. Today, I finally completed the painting of the board, so I can finally begin to attach the items to the board.

I had planned to do a splatter effect, filling balloons with maroon, white, and black paint and tossing them against the board. However, it didn't work as expected. Most of the balloons wouldn't break after throwing them against the board multiple times, which was embarrassing since I had both my wife and son outside watching me do it. When they finally did break, paint went everywhere including all over me and my son who was some 10-15 feet away. He just laughed and giggled at my failure, so I guess it wasn't so bad. And he didn't even seem to mind that he had paint droplets all over his hair. Anyway, the board is now painted, so we're making progress.