How-to: Wooden Play Car (Guest Post from Daddy!)

We're still alive!  I have been taking a much needed blogging break as I focus on spring cleaning (and,  I also discovered hulu.com).  But today we have a very special Guest Post, from none other than the Infant Bibliophile's Daddy!

After Christmas time, we had acquired quite a surplus of empty cardboard boxes.  It doesn't take very much imagination to see that an adequately sized cardboard box is quite a lot like a small car (particularly if you are two years old), and so very rapidly, and with some assistance from his parents, the Bibliophile acquired his own vehicle.  [We blogged about it here.]

This first attempt certainly provided entertainment, but the obvious drawback of cardboard cars is that they are not very durable.  By the time a door and steering wheel had been added to his, the maintenance schedule of the cardboard version was unfortunately a very accurate imitation of that of a real car.

So, soon into the new year, I decided to make a car out of wood: a yellow one, of course (the Bibliophile's favourite colour).  I put together a quick mock-up in Blender, planning to buy the yellow version of this steering wheel to go in it.

By the end of January, with a bit of mess left in the garage and somewhat more money than I had plan to spend gone, here was our result:

It doesn't look exactly like the design, for a few reasons (wood of different dimensions turned out to be on sale at the hardware shop, I found an old plastic steering wheel on an electronic toy we already
had, and I realised that supporting the back of the seat should work better with wood under compression instead of nails under tension).  And I still haven't gotten around to fitting headlights or other dashboard controls.  But it does keep the litte man occupied occasionally, and it certainly kept his father out of trouble while it was being put together!




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You can see all of our reviews of children's books about transportation here.




Question: What are your favorite homemade toys?


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