I was combing the internet for ideas for equipment to use with Agate, so that we were sure to provide her with a rich 'sensory diet' at home.

Unfortunately much of what I would have liked isn't shipped to where we are or the shipping was exorbitant.

Anyhow in one of the online stores I chanced upon a hula hoop, which got me thinking that this would be a fabulous tool for increasing sensory awareness in the abdominal area. My hoop from childhood (I know that is ages ago) is still lying around here albeit in need of repair but as I researched I realised that this would only be suitable for a pre-school child.

Hoops it seems ought to come up to between your waist and shoulders! That sounded monstrous.

A quick phone around of the stores in our region and a nosey online for those in our country confirmed that the largest that was sold was the same as what we had. So I did what any keen d.i.y'er would and purposed to make one.

We used these instructions from JasonUnbound, gaining untold new information about irrigation piping in the process! Who can say LDPE with me?

It wasn't as cheap as I had hoped, as we had to buy a 25m minimum roll. The guy was really nice though and gave us a 10% discount just for the sheer reason that we were doing something a little unusual with their products I think!

Making the hoops was so much fun. Of course it was an opportunity to make a memory, but also for each person to express their creativity as we decorated them with insulation tape in a variety of colours. Even that turned out better than I expected. I was sort of thinking it would look tacky compared to the beautifully decorated hoops that I saw online.

Each hoop was made to measure and yes I made one for myself too - it was huge, requiring 3.6m of tubing. We joined them using the boiling water method as seen here

and were inpsired that we could actually decorate them ourselves after seeing this video

In total we custom made (such a more professional-sounding term than d.i.y'ed) 9 hoops. One each was given away to a girl either side of where we lived; and we know one of them has used it every day since.

Believe it or not the large hoop is easy to keep up, nothing like the fast gyrations I remember being required to levitate the (pre-school) one I had. Even the girls have given my one a go with success.

The best thing is, that we get to have fun, chat and exercise all at the same time. Sure the first couple of minutes are the longest but we now take a stop watch outside and aim for 15 minutes. We know that we have this time to connect and breath in the fresh air. So cool!