Activity Wall

One of the great space savers in our house is to hang toys that can done standing up or on a lap on the wall. When we bought our house, I installed a long flat board (very cheap and ready to go from Home Depot) on a long wall we have between our kitchen and eating space. I put scratchy Velcro on the board and then attached soft Velcro to all the toys.

My kids use these toys all the time, but we don't have anywhere to put them for easy access. Displaying them like this on the wall makes them attractive to use and fun for kids who come to our house to see. Since I use Velcro, kids can pull the activities off the wall to use them in a different part of the house. Then, I just hang them back up on the wall when it is time to clean up, which seems like never at our house.

I like to hang toys that help support early literacy development on the wall. As you can see, my kids are developing their writing skills, vocabulary, fine motor skills, comprehension skills and storytelling skills. I will be adding more activities soon since we just had our first round of Christmas with my in-laws.

Since M is learning how to walk, she likes to stand at the wall to do the activities.

 I try to change out the felt board with seasonal activities. I got the ornaments ready to cut and put sticky Velcro on the back from Mel's Desk. I made my flannel board by wrapping a large piece of felt I already had on hand around an old scrap of foam board. I secured the felt to the back of the board with duct tape. I used the removable sticky stuff for hanging hooks to hang the board on the wall. This one has stayed on our wall for about a year and a half and shows no signs of falling.

M is very obsessed with our Melissa & Doug latch board right now. A has mastered the latches and is now using it to recognize his numbers and counting. This activity is a mainstay and I have never switched it out for something else. They never seemed to get tired of working with it.

M loves to scribble. This is the activity that gets pulled off the wall the most. We still have the magnet shapes that go with it, but since they are a choking hazard, I have put them away until M is older. A is also practicing his writing skills, but he stills prefer pretending to be a truck or a race car over learning writing and drawing skills.

We have a lot of different magnets that migrate between this cookie sheet and the refrigerator. The kids don't use this as much as the flannel board, but they still enjoy the animals and learning the different names and sounds of each animal. I should probably switch out the animals soon with something like construction truck magnets.