Weighted blankets and lap pads

This has been a project that started out of a discussion with my sister. Both her boys are on the spectrum, with the youngest also having SPD. We both looked into making weighted quilts for them. I bought 5kg of pellets and some quilt panels, but she decided to make them for herself, so I had a surplus of materials, and no purpose for them.

I decided rather than waste them, I would make some therapy items for my school. I am normally militantly opposed to sewing things for work (people seem to want more and more if I do). However, we have a very challenging little person at school, who suffers badly with anxiety and emotion control, so I decided to make a weighted quilt, using this tutorial:
How to make a weighted blanket
 

I used the standard measurement of 10% of the childs body weight. I went on 20kg as an average, so the finished quilt is about 2kg. Thats about 23g of pellets per cell. I liked the tutorial, as it doesn’t mess around with trying to bind a very heavy thing.

I still had a surplus of pellets, so I used up some other fabric, and made weighted lap pads using the same method. These are 20x15in in size, and use about 900g of pellets per pad. These are for the “thinking space” at the school, a breakout room for little ones who aren’t coping on the playground or need some help with managing friendships.

They aren’t too heavy, but they are an assistance item for reassurance, not something to pin the child to the chair.