My husband bought the materials minus the dowels and has started making the brachiation ladder. Our daughter is 2y 4mo and on the smaller side. We dont know if we should use 1 inch dowels, recommended for a 3 yr old, and how far to space them. If we make it with 3/4 inch dowels, how hard is it to change them to bigger ones spaced further apart as the child grows?
What did you do?
Can anyone help Plarka?
WARNING: I haven’t made a set (my little one hasn’t arrived yet) and am therefore completely speculating about the functionality of my suggestions.
The 3/4" dowels are to be spaced 6" apart, and the 1" dowels 12" apart. That means when it’s time to change the ladder, every second hole will need to be widened by 1/4". Widening a hole isn’t hard, widening a hole so the centers stay in the same spot is nearly impossible. The other ones could just be plugged or left empty. A strange idea that might work is to make the ladder alternating 3/4", 1", 3/4", etc then when it’s time to increase the spacing all that needs to be done is remove the 3/4" dowels.
Depending on the length of her arms, she may be able to use the a ladder spaced 12" between rungs. Although the smaller dowels would be a good idea, because big hands can grip little dowels better than little hands can grip big dowels. Which also really means you could teach her to skip rungs once they’re too close together to function properly.
So after all that, I guess my conclusion is to make the smaller one (3/4" dowels spaced 6") it’s the more functional option.
Well 6 inches seemed way too close together so we made them nine inches apart and used 3/4 inch dowels and it works great! Thanks for your reply, but we had already made it!