toddler stilts

I saw this fun idea at Made by Joel (a very cool blog) for making toddler stilts at the beginning of summer and filed it away in my brain as a clever idea that I wanted to do. I really need a better filing system for ideas…..because I JUST got around to doing it. 🙂
I even had every single thing in my house that I needed to make them.
I found these two scrap 2X4’s in the basement that we were throwing away. I was planning on cutting them with our hand saw and then using the our drill to make the holes. But, I went to dad’s workshop instead – table saw and drill press plus dad’s help equals way better than manual. But you could definitely do it without the power tools.

Then the kids colored them…..because…..well, why not? (i actually wanted to paint either their foot or shoe and use that as a stamp on the block for decoration….but didn’t want to wait for paint to dry…..maybe next time)
The bean colored a little bit…..but was WAY more interested in tasting the crayons and then sticking them all in the holes. …..boys!

After they were finished coloring….I cut some rope…..burned the ends….threaded it through the wood block and tied it off. Burning the ends was for fray prevention….but actually really helped in the threading process too.
The kids really had fun playing with them and learning how to use them. Fun project and great coordination excersice. Can’t wait to play with them outside….but it’s raining right now.