This was a great fun project to do and you probably already have everything you need for it as it’s 100% recycled. I did this project in September 2020. We were living in rented accommodation last year and one of the issues is you can’t attach anything to the walls (pretty standard rule in rented houses in the UK, where we lived at the time).

Senses: Touch, vision, sound.

Skills: Helps refine baby’s motor skills.

Baby age at time: 13 months old.

Cost: £0

Time to make: About 30 minutes.

Start off with a big piece of cardboard. We used one of the boxes that Jellyfish’s cot (US English: Crib) came in. We had been using the box as a fireguard (we didn’t use the fire at our old house as it was a real smoke fire and I don’t think they’re great especially around babies).

For a few months I’d saved empty packets of wet wipes with the plastic clasps (rather than the flimsy sticky lids many of them have). These are great for a peekaboo wall. Using a pair of scissors, I cut out the clasps, leaving a decent-sized square of the packaging around the clasp so there was something I could tape down.

I taped the clasps to the cardboard on all four sides. Next, I got some old leaflets and packaging out of the recycling. I chose ones with brightly-coloured pictures and I cut them out. I taped the pictures behind the wet wipe clasps and also put pictures on top to ensure Jellyfish knew these were something interesting.

I also got some multicoloured rainbow washi tape from Amazon and used it to attach empty toilet roll tubes to the sensory wall so he could have fun pulling them off again.

Baby’s verdict: He saw the pictures of cars on the clasps and immediately went to play with them. He pulled the clasps open and found more pictures behind them! He had a lot of fun with these little “mystery doors”. It took him about two or three weeks to rip all the pictures off the wet wipe packets. I stuck them back on a few times. When we moved to a new country, however, the sensory wall was no more, but his motor skills did improve from playing with this toy regularly and he was able to open other things more confidently.

It’s a super-simple toy but he’s had a lot of fun out of it! I was sad to finally consign this to recycling when we moved to our new house in Ireland.