This Dad Made an Electronic ‘Busy Board’ for His Curious Toddler

If you’re a parent then you probably already know what a busy board is. For the rest of you, a busy board is a toy for toddlers that contains a bunch of different individual activities. Those activities are often simple, everyday interactive items like latches, zippers, or cranks. Toddlers naturally want to experiment with anything interesting that they come across, and these busy boards help them learn how to manipulate common objects and mechanisms. You can buy prebuilt busy boards, but it’s easy enough to make your own. You can even make it electronic, as demonstrated on the CodeParade YouTube channel.

You probably won’t make your toddler a busy board that looks exactly like this one, but it should give you some inspiration and direction for your own build. Almost all of the components used in this project were found at an electronics salvage store, and you can follow a similar approach or use whatever you have lying around. The only real requirements are that your toddler be able to physically operate the thing, and that it won’t harm them. So don’t go using a tiny parts or anything high voltage. Of course, you’ll also want to find components that are enticing to toddlers—big buttons and dials, for instance, are virtually irresistible.

After selecting all of the components, CodeParade mounted them onto the top lid of an old wooden wedding box. Just about any kind of solid box will work here, you’ll just want to make sure it’s sturdy enough to hold up to the abuse toddlers are capable of unleashing. It’s not strictly necessary, but a coat of paint can help brighten things up. CodeParade then wired up all of the components to an Arduino Uno. They programmed a handful of neat musical sequences, and have shared their code on GitHub. That said, it’s unlikely that you’ll be using the same components that they did, so the code is really only there in case you want to replicate one of the functions. The result is a tactile contraption that any toddler would enjoy experimenting with, and building one for your own child would surely be a very rewarding experience.