Andie's Vision...Grampa's Creation...

When the mini-Marx's were here for Camp Christensen, Andie shared an idea she came across for making T-Chairs and Balance Boards for Hayden and Bailey. Grampa accepted this challenge and went to work creating the cutest little toys for these kids to play and exercise one. We went to LaGrange before going to gymnastics so the mini-Marx's could wake up from quiet time and try out these new treasures.

These are pictures of the T-Chairs:

These are pictures of the Balance Boards: These are pictures of the beam used to make up the Balance Boards (I like the middle one because it was Bailey's first attempt and Hayden is to the right of the picture with a huge grin cheering his "Bay Bay" on): At one point Bailey decided to climb up with Claude and hide her toy car in the sleeve of his shirt. He raised his arms and the car disappeared. She had lots of giggly fun trying to find her car and it created lots of grins for Pa.

The T-Chair is just 2 lengths of 2x4's nailed together. Claude went the extra mile and painted Bailey's purple and Hayden's green. Then he got scraps of fabric and batting from me and made little cushioned seats on them. You don't have to do that extra but you might want to sand the part where their tussy will go so you don't get splinters. The Balance Boards are 4x4 garden beams. Claude chose to paint these in green paint he had on hand. The flat board on top is a 1x12. You just center it on the beam for playing. Claude chose to paint the flat boards with white paint he had and then with the purple for Bailey and the green for Hayden he painted a strip in the middle of the flat board and painted their initial on either end. Hayden figured out to just use the beam portion as a balance beam.