It’s been quite the busy month around here. We’ve taken two road trips, one of them being 13 long hours. It’s not abnormal for us to do such trips and they will continue to happen on a pretty regular basis for us. I’ve got the traveling down pretty good with J, but there’s one thing I’ve been missing. I’ve always wanted a great lap board on these trips so that he can eat, play, and create all on one tray.
I’ve seen a few cookie sheets glued to a pillow in the blogosphere and tried it out. My problem was that the cookie sheet kept coming unglued from the pillowcase! So frustrating!
My brilliant husband saw my frustrations with the tray and had a solution…magnets. We joined forces and came up with a lap board that went way above my initial idea.
The board has 3 different trays:
- Divided tray for eating
- Dry erase board
- Metal cookie sheet
It has a very simple construction…here are the supplies you’ll need.
- Thin wooden board
- Heavy duty magnets
- Metal plates
- Super glue
- Tray for eating, dry erase board, and a cookie sheet
- Pillow (we used a small throw pillow)
- Pillowcase
The most important piece of this set up is the brown board and magnets. My husband glued the magnets to a scrap piece of wood. This piece slides into the pillow case (magnet side up).
Somehow our magnets broke on the way home from the store, but they still worked. We didn’t let J handle them because of the sharp edges.
He then glued the metal plates to the back of the plastic dividing tray so that they will stick to the magnets on the board. The dry erase board already has magnets on the back and the cookie sheet is already metal, so they were good to go.
The tray worked beautifully on the trip. We were able to feed J breakfast and snacks on the try without worrying that food would end up all over the backseat.
Excuse the bad quality of the pics, it was sunrise with a camera phone…best I could do 🙂
He was able to play with his cars and even did a bit of art work on the dry erase board along the trip. We brought magnetic letters along too, but he wasn’t all that interested in them this time.
We plan on expanding this a bit for future trips. We have already decided to add a Duplo building plate next time. I bet that felt story boards can also work great with this too. The options are endless!
Follow along on Pinterest to see all the fun stuff I find! Man, I love that place :).
Smartie!
cute idea!
This is a very good idea indeed. You could even use white board paint solution over it so that they can even show their creativity over it. It will give them a chance to explore.
This can be useful when traveling! I was browsing online for used campers for sale in arkansas, and at some point, I thought it would be difficult to maintain cleanliness in kids in traveling though RV has kitchen features already. But seriously, feeding them inside the car is a headache.
Yeah, this is a great idea. We are planning on buying our own caravan in the future for more convenience but in the meantime, this could work for us.
Travelling with a baby really taught for mom. For comfortable travel kids need some essential accessories which make travel time easy and comfortable both mom and kids. It’s help to keep kids busy and entertain during trips. Like other mom i am always trying to ensure all necessary accessories to entertainment my kids during car trips. Thanks for sharing really important product for kid. I am searching best car seat travel tray for my kids. Thanks for helping right one for my little one.