Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Toy Chute

Ty has always been a bit of a scientist, a physicist, an engineer...and though he naturally finds ways to test his little hypothesis', I like to help him out where I can. Lately he has been especially interested in putting toys through his rug when it's rolled up and using my husband's foam roller as a makeshift chute for balls and bean bags. I have known about making a chute from a mailer and tying it to a stair railing for a long time, but the only stairs we have go into the basement and I'm not too keen on that being a play area for him. So... 

I decided to use packing tape to affix this long box to the wall. As I had figured (and hoped), he loves it! If only I could make it so he could adjust it to different angles... 

We placed a basket of toys at the top and a basket to catch the objects in at the bottom. He played around a bit with basket placement as well as figuring out what balls and objects were too big or just right. Some objects, like heavier balls, fly out fast and far, while things like puff balls go slowly and require the basket to be closer. We quickly found a happy medium.

There are some of the objects used yesterday: balls, pegs, puff balls and unit blocks. Today we also tried small animal figurines and jingle bells. He especially enjoyed the noise the bells made going down and in!

2 comments:

  1. First, I want to say I love your blog. I love getting ideas for fun things to do with my son. Second, have you thought about buying magnetic primer and chalkboard paint for your wall? You could affix strong magnets to the back of the cardboard and then Ty could move his chute around. Plus what kid wouldn't want to color on the walls?

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  2. Thank you so much Katie! I have never even heard of magnetic primer! What an aboslutely wonderful idea! The only hitch is that we move a lot and tend to rent our homes (and are hopefully moving really soon) but I hope I can figure out a wat to try that in our next place! If not you just gave my readers some great inspiration. Thank you!

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