Building a OT busy board

One of my favourite things about the place that I work is that anything is a possibility and I get to say yes to my colleagues all the time! I work as an Occupational Therapist (OT) in a day program with children, teens and adults who have a variety of different diagnoses, MOST of them being neurodiverse. I have a client who I work with and who I facilitate programming for, and his one to one support throughout the day suggested that he wished he could find something small the client could use on days that he was physically too tired to play, but would allow his hands and brain to stay engaged. In came my excitement to get creative and build a busy board!

What is a Busy board?

A busy board is an interactive toy, often designed for young children, consisting of tactile elements for children to explore and play with. Often these allow engagement of curiosity and exploration of different fine motor skills as kids move items up and down, left and right and round and round. Some items may include skills like tying shoes, zipping zippers and opening latches.

What are the benefits of a busy board?

For me, the intention of this busy board was to provide an activity that my client could engage in when he was having a harder physical day, and still have a meaningful time at our program. There are loads of general benefits for busy boards, here are a few:

Fine motor control – manipulating different elements on the busy board provides opportunity to practice fine motor control, hand eye coordination, finger strength and dexterity… and these are all important skills that will generalize into activities of daily living (ADLs) including buttoning and zipping clothes, and other life skills such as handwriting! You can even add zippers and buttons to your busy board for more targeted skills

Cognitive development – I prefer to target these skills in functional experiences, but exploring a busy board allows children to develop problem solving skills, cause and effect relationship understanding, and a curiosity! Depending on the items on your busy board, it may provide opportunities for practicing logical thinking too!

Sensory exploration – young children learn with their senses. In my area of practice, many of my children regulate their emotions and their bodies using senses such as touch. Busy boards often provide opportunities to explore different sensory experiences such as sights, sounds and textures, and I made sure to add some different colours, textures and a musical component to expand on these experiences with my busy board!

Making a busy board!

You can definitely get your hands on a busy board if you are interested, WITHOUT becoming DIY royalty! I could have easily popped onto Amazon and ordered something quick, but I wanted this busy board to have intention for the child as he is not the age you would typically use a busy board. This would be something that the kids at my program could use and be excited by.

I also chose a busy board DIY project because I knew that buying one may cost a lot and not even be what I was interested in for the purpose I wanted this for work. I was very excited to find that ETSY has shops where you can buy individual pieces of busy boards to build!

I also was able to be frugal as I had different options of materials accessible – my manager had this large wooden board that was a sensory toy for one of her animals. I took some time to deep clean it, and then covered the back with heavy duty black tape that my wife had for her work so that the rougher side was covered. Because I chose the harder route where the wood was not drilled into, it took a bit more effort but was doable!

My friend works at a dance studio so I was also able to get some different textured fabric from old dance costumes, which added a cool sensory flare! (The blue feathers is a hair fascinator!)

The choices of busy board pieces lined up with some of the different goals and interests of my other clients as well to draw in their engagement with it too! It was a big success upon introducing it, and I am excited to see it become part of our program in months to come! It was also just such a fun adventure to be able to bring my coworker’s vision to life, especially since his original idea didn’t have a full name to it, so I was able to validate his observations and support his assessment!

Do you use a busy board in your practice or with your own child as a parent? I’d love to hear your experiences so I can further expand our tools at my day program too!

I will add the Etsy shops in a link below if you are interested in taking a look for your own busy board!

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Toys4Logic

https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/SensoryBUSYboardGift