Crazy DIY Geoboard
This giant DIY geoboard is easy to make and will have your kids working on lots of fine motor skills, maths skills and more!
Using a large piece of foam and items you probably already have at home, and allowing your kids to construct their own geoboard from scratch will encourage lots of creative thinking and problem solving, and it’s lots of fun too!
This geoboard activity includes small pieces and sharp objects, please supervise young children.
Geoboards are usually a square board with pegs or nails set in rows that you wrap rubber bands arounds to make shapes. They are used to work on mathematical concepts like perimeter and area as well as exploring the characteristics of triangles and other polygons.
Regular geoboards are fun, but it’s even more fun to make your own!
Try one of these fabulous fine motor activities for kids!
How to Make a Giant DIY Geoboard
To make a DIY geoboard you need a base material, some pegs or nails, and some rubber bands. To make our crazy giant geoboard you need all those things, plus some fun extras!
To make the base of the geoboard use two sheets of foam, taped together.
You’ll need to tape the two foam sheets together so you have a nice thick base to push your ‘pegs’ into so they are nice and sturdy.
Once you have the foam base ready it’s time to come up with ideas of things you can poke into the foam to make the ‘pegs’, things you can wrap around the pegs, and some extra bits and pieces that you can thread onto the pegs to make it even more fun!
Things to use as geoboard pegs.
Anything you can poke halfway into the foam makes a great geoboard peg, such as:
- push pins
- nails
- plastic sword tooth picks
- small bamboo fruit skewers
- toothpicks
- golf tees
Things to use as geoboard bands.
Of course rubber bands are perfect to wrap around the geoboard pegs, but you could also use:
- rubber bands
- hair elastics
- pieces of wool or string
Extra items to add to your giant geoboard!
As well as bands to wrap around the pegs, it is lots of fun to also add other items that can be threaded onto longer pegs such as:
- beads
- wooden shapes from a tap tap set
- cut up straws
- paper or leaves with holes punched in them
- sequins
- buttons with large holes
Playing with your Giant Homemade Geoboard!
Now that you have all your supplies ready it’s time to get creative and make your own geoboard!
We discovered that poking the skewers and swords deeply into the foam meant they could support many rubber bands pulling in lots of directions. So we were able to make all kinds of shapes and patterns.
The tall skewers were great for threading beads and straws onto making crazy patterns and constructions.
You can use the small push pins and tacks to add beads and shapes straight onto the foam which is a great fine motor work out for small hands, and a lesson in ‘sharp things’ and how to use them safely.
There are lots of opportunities for maths learning, including identifying triangles and counting the sides of polygons in this geoboard activity. My preschooler also experimented with the concepts of bigger and small, making shapes inside shapes, and there was so much counting happening too!
This is also a fabulous fine motor activity with preschoolers needing to coordinate the small muscles in their hands and their arm muscles to manipulate the bands and small pieces.
But a huge bonus to this homemade geoboard that other geoboards don’t have is the opportunities for creativity!
While my older kids made stars and triangular patterns, my preschooler was busy making houses, machines and traps! Working out how to make the shapes he wanted to create his machines and problem solving to get things to work they way he wanted was such a great creative thinking activity!
I can’t take it! THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!! I absolutely love this idea!
So ridiculously crazy cool! How is it you even had half that stuff? I mean the swords.. so cool! My son would go NUTS for those!! Just sooo cool!.
The swords are cool aren’t they!
I just happened to see them at our local $2 shop one day and bought them on a whim… they’ve been sitting in the cupboard ever since!
There is so much awesome, right here. Nice one :)
This is absolutely FABULOUS! It’s amazing to think we can spend so much money on similar things from toy or educational suppliers. This is even better! Love it.
This looks like so much fun! Especially as the rainy season is coming up for us out in the States.- what a great rainy day activity. Thanks for sharing!
My obsession with loose parts is skyrocketing! {What else could we use??} I love how this could be fun for the whole family. I could make two boards, one for my toddler and one for my preschooler and let them have at it. Win!