Sensory Board: Update

I look back at the post I put out in October of last year and think how naive and funny I was to think that I was close to finishing the board back then.  At that time, I had just completed the painting, which I assumed was the hardest part.  Boy was I wrong!  What followed was like a typical construction project for me with things not going as simply as they were in my head, many more trips to the hardware store for missing parts, and lots of redesign to make things actually work.  Not to mention having little to no time to actually work on it.

So, here we are six months later, and I can finally say that it's done.  I have the sensory board constructed and ready for use (although truth be told, Troy has been playing with it for months in its partially-done state).  The last two parts were putting feet on it, so it would actually stand up on its own and getting the alphabet blocks constructed and put on the board.  These two probably took as long as everything else to complete, although there was long delays between design and actual construction.

I had completely overlooked the feet when I originally had designed this.  I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me at the time, but it didn't become apparent until I tried to stand it up for the first time.  I also didn't take into account how difficult it would be to design feet for a heavy, free-standing, three-foot tall piece of plywood with hardware hanging on it.  In the end, I went with 8-inch, metal, reinforced shelf supports on both the front and back.  Slightly bigger ones, like 12-inch, might have been better, but these work with only a minor wobble to the board when Troy pulls on it.

As for the alphabet blocks, I originally had intended to paint them to look like a child's building blocks, which I asked my mother-in-law to do when she came to visit.  However, she wasn't satisfied with merely painting, so she suggested burning the letter into the blocks instead, which is what we did.  I had her put both the English and Greek alphabets on the blocks with both capital and lowercase letters, so Troy can learn both languages.  The hardest part, though, was figuring out a way to display them so that they moved when he spun them, without touching the board or each other.  This was definitely the most time-consuming design on the entire board.  It seems like an easy solve, and yet...and yet...it wasn't!  I eventually ended up with L-brackets and long bolts, and I drilled holes into all the blocks (not as easy as it sounds without a drill press).

All that to say that the board is finally together, and it turned out much better (definitely different) than originally imagined.  It's definitely unique, not just the configuration and inclusion of objects, but the paint job as well.  And Troy seems to enjoy playing with it (and the other kids enjoyed it at his birthday party), so that's all the success I need.