What Is A Busy Board And What Is It For?

Toys that are designed to develop thinking, logic and fine motor skills have existed for a long time, but at the end of the 19th century there was a new milestone in their history.

Maria Montessori, an Italian doctor and pedagogue, invented a system in which children learn to interact with everyday objects, to serve their needs independently according to their age, and to keep order. With the help of special aids and devices, brain activity is stimulated, which is important for all children. Now educational materials, toys, children’s clubs according to the Montessori method can be found in every corner of the world.

Regardless of whether you and your child are engaged in the Montessori method, the busy board will in any case perform its direct function – to develop interest and maintain the activity of the brain.

What is a busy board?

This is a sensory board that develops fine motor skills and household self-care skills. On the surface of this item you can see in different combinations and variations:

• bills;
• velcro;
• elastic bands;
• clocks;
• zippers;
• buttons;
• bolts;
• switches;
• regulators;
• sockets;
• door chains;
• doors;
• windows;
• gears;
• mazes;
• locks;
• laces;
• pawls;
• light bulbs;
• sound devices.

The composition and appearance of the sensory board is chosen depending on both the age and the needs of the child. Its main task is to help the baby learn how to use everyday objects in life. This is the case when the thing is not just curious, but also functional. Children open, close latches; turn on lights and sound; fasten, unfasten zippers and velcro.

What is useful for a baby’s development

A variety of actions that the child learns by playing with busy board, allow him to get skills for everyday life. Zipping up zippers, tying shoelaces, opening windows, turning on light bulbs – all this will come in handy for a growing baby, especially during the “me by myself!” period.

With the help of a sensory board, it is convenient to show your child what is loud, quiet, soft, hard, smooth, rough, sonorous, muffled, bright, dim. He will learn to distinguish between geometric shapes and volumes. The more often you refer to the bisiboard, the more often the kid will have to repeat actions: opening, closing, untying, turning it on, turning it off and so on. All this contributes to the development of intelligence and speech.

The child will learn that you can do a lot of interesting things on your own; learn to control your fingers, explore the world around you with your senses; learn to reach the right goal. Will remember how to open the latch, with what force should be pressed on the switch to control lighting. He will learn to concentrate, to follow interest – and this is a very important part of learning about the world. After all, if you quit opening the pawl halfway through, you may never find out what’s behind the window.

The more often a child tries to do something for himself, the faster he will start to get good at it. This helps them feel confident in their abilities and lay the foundation for healthy self-esteem. An understanding of cause-and-effect connections, the order of actions and all types of memory – visual, auditory, tactile – also develop. In turn, this contributes to the development of cognitive abilities, which will not be superfluous for the future schoolboy.

And thanks to the busy board, parents will be able to free up time for personal errands or recreation. The small busy board is easy to take with you on the road to entertain your baby.

At what age can a baby play with a busy board

Start acquainting your baby with the sensory board from 8 months, but at this age it is not so easy to sit in one place, studying the same subject. Busy board for younger children have a simplified look, contain sorters, keys, rattles, rustles, tinkles. Kids from one to three years will be more interesting to learn how to open and close locks, mazes, unraveling shoelaces. Kids 5-6 years old may be interested in more complex or multi-step processes. There are different levels of difficulty boards, and you can update them as they get older.

What should you focus on when you choose a busy board? Look, what captivates the child. If a kid is not very clear yet, what all those things attached to the board mean, introduce him to the different options. And when the child masters, for example, the switch, you can show how it works in your normal life. Most likely, you will see on the child’s face surprise and delight at such a discovery.

Types of busy board

• Sensory Board. This is a classic model on which objects for the development of motor skills are placed. Boards can be both large stationary for home and compact for flights, trips.
• Busy board in the form of toys, such as cars, animals. They are usually small in size and suitable as a compact. Such toys are good to have in addition to the stationary busy board – the latter are usually more diverse filling, they are still made just for the development, rather than for free play.
• Busy box, or sensory cube. Usually consists of a cube with five or six functional sides. Large busy box can be filled with toys. They are inconvenient to transport, but there are smaller models for this purpose, which we mentioned above. Small cubes will allow you to distract the child for a while on the road or in line at the clinic.
• Busy board – a house. Consists of 5-7 surfaces with developmental elements. Houses can be tiny, and may be such that a three-year-old fits comfortably. In a large busy-house is convenient to play with several children, as it has enough surfaces and developing elements.
• Sensor book. The elements are placed on two parts, which fold up for storage. Sometimes the second part has counters, a drawing board, numbers or letters.
• The board is made of soft materials. This does not attach the light bulbs or pawls, but it allows children under a year to develop sensory skills, is an excellent alternative to sorter with rattles. Such busy boards are sometimes made in the form of books, where various elements are moved from page to page. For example, a butterfly on Velcro can travel from one spread to the next. If you want, you can make them yourself. Or you can periodically change some individual items for more interesting to the child.

Just remember that for the safety of the baby, small parts should either be securely attached or not at all.

How to choose the right touch board?

• It is necessary for a sensory board to be safe, just like all the other items we choose for children. It should be made of a solid base, for example, a polished sheet of plywood of excellent quality, without knots or cracks.
• All moving elements – as firmly as possible fixed, screwed or glued. Small children can lick, bite off small parts, so you need to choose the complexity according to age, pay attention to the manufacturer’s recommendations.
• If the board has battery-operated electrical elements, all the electrics should be securely hidden so that they can’t be easily accessed.
• A child can drop the board, so the parts should be sturdy, resistant to falling.
• If the busy board or its elements are painted, the paint should be safe and nontoxic. Infants are more interested in contrasting colors, while older children can choose less garish color options. It would be great if the brightness of color design is inversely proportional to the complexity.
• Among the safe boards, choose the one that is suitable in terms of functionality. The more diverse and interesting the content, the longer the child can work with a sensory board. Or, on the contrary, you can give preference to a variant with several different models, developing different skills and designed for different ages of the child.

You can make a chalkboard yourself or choose a suitable chalkboard for your child from those that we recommend on our page