Airplane Activity Tray, Take 2

So I thought I'd have a second go at the airplane activity tray to go on the tray table of the plane. This should help the kids keep occupied on our upcoming long haul flights, and help to stop toys, pens, pages, forks etc. making a dash for the floor.

I had been eying off the vinyl table cloth in the shop with roads on it, but it was so expensive, and I already had perfectly good plastic at home... so I decided to turn the trays over and draw my own road. My own? Well, a bit of a co-operative effort with the kids.

Here's how I did it:

A piece of vinyl (I used an old kids splash mat) 32cm x 50cm.

4 pieces of something more firm (I used some laminated paper). 2 need to be 3cm x 24.8cm, and the second 2 are 3cm x 21cm.

Some elastic and some velcro.

Measure 2 cm from the corners, draw a triangle and cut it off. This makes the corner less bulky when folded.

Turn the plastic over, measure half way along the long edge. Place the two shorter strips of laminated paper 1cm from the edge and close to the centre line (but not overlapping so you can fold the tray in half to store/carry). Use sticky tape to hold it in place.

Sew it down, folding over the plastic as you go.

Position the longer laminated paper strips on the short side of the plastic. They should be about 1cm from the edge, but take care that they are corner to corner with the strips you've already sewed on, without overlapping. See the fine read lines in the picture above for my attempt to show this. If they overlap, you won't be able to neatly fold up the sides of the tray.

To make the front edge of the tray, take a small left over strip of plastic (about 3cm x 21cm) and roll it into a small roll (or something else soft, on my first version I used wadding, but it was a bit messy). Tape it in place on the front edge, again leaving a gap at the centre line for folding. Fold over the front edge about 1.5cm and sew it down.

Cut small strip of elastic about 5cm long. Sew one end on the inside of the tray, close to the end of laminated paper strip. I did it on the side wall, but it would also work on the back wall. Sew the other end to the back of the tray at the other edge of the laminated paper strip.

When you assemble the tray, pinch the corner into a triangle and tuck it under the elastic. 

On the front side of the tray, fold over the corner and sew down (it would have been slightly better to sew right down to the corner like I did first time). Sew a 3cm strip of elastic across the end of the laminated paper strip.

When you fold this corner it, it makes a little triangle that can be slipped under the elastic.

To attach the tray to the plane tray table, I sewed on 4 strips of elastic to the back side. I sewed them slightly inside the laminated paper strips. This makes them on slightly inside the edge of the bottom area of the tray when assembled. (This means if the plane tray table is slightly smaller than expected the activity tray should still sit nicely.) Sew the elastic strips so they are pointing outwards. Sew a rectangle of velcro (hook and loop) to the other end of each piece of elastic.

I decided this would be best because:

1. it seemed simple to do, 

2. it gave me two ends so I could adjust the length of the straps a bit to cater for different sized tables, 

3. I can open them up and twist them around the back arms to the tray table if needed and 

4. I can open them up and push them to the side if I want to use the activity tray on a train or table.

Finished the sewing, now to decorate.

First I roughed out the outline using lead pencil. I only had a black and a red permanent marker in house, so I used them (Mr 5 insisted the roads should be red on his). I then used an eraser to remove any unwanted pencil lines.

We then found (after trying all the felt tipped pens and finding they all rubbed off) that pencil coloured in beautifully, and wouldn't wipe off with a wet cloth (although can mostly be rubbed off with an eraser), and so the kids could add some extra colour to the pictures.

Magnetic Triangular Dominoes

I'm really happy with this magnetic triangular dominoes set I recently made. My kids have been enjoying using our Tantrix set, although it's a bit on the tricky side for Miss 3, and the pieces have a tendency to move around a bit when a new piece is added. I thought 3 sided dominoes would be perfect for them, especially if they were magnetic and therefore would stay where they were put (and give a satisfying click as they snap to the surface). And I just happened to have some old flat magnets that I was waiting to use to make something cool...

Instructions:

1. Take some old sheet magnets (our local real estate agents' advertising provide us with these free of charge :))

2. Glue a sheet of white paper on, to cover up any graphics on the magnet.

3. Print out some equilateral triangles (I used a free printable, and printed them at 250% size, so each triangle side is roughly an inch long). I used about 80 triangles.

4. Glue the triangles on the magnets.

5. Write all the combinations of 3 numbers on the triangles. E.g. [0,0,0] [0,0,1] [0,0,2] ... [0,1,1] [0,1,2] ... [1,1,1] [1,1,2] ... [5,5,5]

6. After a little experimentation I found I wanted to go back and make a second copy of all the triangles with 3 different numbers, with their numbers written counter-clockwise rather than clockwise. E.g. [1,2,3] compared to [1,3,2]. This makes it much easier to make a complete wheel from the pieces. Mr Crafty later told me he's played with a commercial version of this, and part of the fun and challenge of the game was that they didn't have the two versions of these tiles. That way if you did make a complete wheel it was a real achievement. This makes me wonder a little if the commercial version has been a little clever about which numbers to put where in these tiles. But for us, seeing as Mr 4 and Miss 3 are my target audience, I think it's much nicer to have the extra pieces.

7. Colour the numbers in. E.g. 0 = orange, 1 = red, 2 = yellow. Not really necessary, but lets face it, colouring can be a nice relaxing activity, and I have a soft spot for pretty coloured things.

8. Cut the triangles out.

9. Find a metal baking tray or metal surface to play on. We used our lovely Melissa and Doug magnetic chalk board, but for a great travel version you could also use a metal suitcase.

The kids (and their parents) really enjoy this one. And there even enough pieces to play two separate games at the same time. 

As an afterthought I covered them with small hexagonal pieces of clear contact paper. To protect them against wayward mothers who knock their glasses of water over on top of the pieces.. To do this, find a printout of hexagons e.g. this one, print it out to scale so that the triangle matches with 3 of the 6 corners from the hexagon, and wrap it on. A little fiddly, but it only took me an hour or so while I played a game with Mr 4 at the same time.

Rice Play Tray

This is a great activity for a rainy day, or for when you want to make dinner without a couple of tired kids under your feet. Just get a baking tray, pour on a cup of uncooked rice, and find all your small diggers and tip trucks, tractors and animals. It usually ends up with a bit of a rice on the floor, but that's very easily swept up. And definitely worth it if it keeps the kids happily playing quietly.

Plane Activity Tray

We are planning on taking the kids on a long trip later this year. It will involve almost 60 hours of planes and airports, 6+ hours of trains, and a wedding reception, amongst other things. I'm not terribly worried (although a little more worried now that I add it all up and write it down in black and white) as I'm sure I can plug the kids into various electronics for most of that... but where's the challenge in that?

So I have been trawling the Internet looking for activities and ideas that can make the trip more enjoyable.

One thing that I saw and really liked the look of was an activity tray. I also liked the look of this table cover. I am still plotting a way to combine the two, but first I wanted to have my own attempt at an activity tray.

My guidelines were something slimline that could potentially fold behind the tray on multiple different types of aircraft, and yet a tray that was as big as possible. Preferably something big enough to fit the food tray on, so no knives and forks would be making a dash for the floor.

This is what I came up with:

Plane activity tray, Mark I.

I took the dimension of the aeroplane tray table to be roughly 24cm x 42cm.
 

I chose sides for the tray to be 3cm on the back and sides, but I wanted a lower front (2cm), so the kids wouldn't have to hold their hands so high to reach things. 

I took an old drop mat and cut it to size leaving 1cm around the edge to sew (so I cut a rectangle of 32cm by 50cm). I then took pieces of old laminated paper and cut them into 4 pieces; 2 to fit the sides (24cm x 3cm), and 2 to fit the back (21cm x 3cm). The back was made from two pieces, not one, as I wanted to leave a gap in the middle of the back so that the tray could be folded smaller than an a4 page, and easily fit into a backpack. I made sure the laminate pieces were a fraction on the small size so that they wouldn't interfere with any folding lines. I then folded the edge of the drop mat over (1cm) and sewed the laminated paper in place.
 

For the front edge I glued a fine strip of batting along and folded the edge over and sewed it into place. Again I left a gap in the batting in the middle of the front edge for easy folding. This made the tray more comfortable to lean wrists on and yet stiff enough to provide an edge. I am worried however that it also makes it too bulky to fit behind a closed tray.

Plane activity tray, folded in half ready to carry

The corners were the tricky bit. I had originally planned to use velcro, but the velcro I had was such poor quality, and the size of the corners was so small, it just didn't grip well enough. So (thanks to some inspiration from Mr Crafty) I decided to sew a loop of ribbon a little way from the corner, which the folded corner can be neatly tucked under. In the next prototype I think I'd use elastic instead of ribbon to made it even easier. To make the front corner a little easier I prefolded the top corner down and stitched it in place.
 

Front corner, folded

Back corner, folded

Front corner, unfolded

Back corner, unfolded

We then trialled the finished product at the dinner table, as a drawing tray and also as a bead threading tray. It worked well, although it didn't managed to catch strings of beads that were dropped half a meter away from it...

Edit: I made a second one with some improvements. Find it here.