My daughter wanted gym equipment for her doll. I found it very easy to create a balance beam and a floor exercise mat.
The Floor Exercise Mat was a simple repurposing of a foam alphabet mat that I had bought for our basement. Instead of using all 26 squares that it came with, I used 9 of them to make a 3x3 mat. My daughter loves flipping McKenna around to do her gymnastics routines.
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| Floor Exercise Mat |
The balance beam took a little more work, but still was very easy. I had purchased a set of 4 corkboard bars with the intention of allowing my daughter to display her artwork, but I had never hung them for her. I started with a cardboard base and covered it with two sheets of card stock to act as the mat around the beam. My cardboard strips were not quite tall enough for a beam, so I glued pairs of them together and then glued each set next to each other to make a longer beam. The craft took about 5 minutes (plus drying time). McKenna now had a beam to practice her routines on.
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| Home Made Balance Beam |
My daughter did receive the beam and bars set for her birthday (well, two months later when the back order finally came in). (I think bars would also be fairly easy to build with a few wooden dowels).
