Tape Town: a quick, easy, cheap way to create roads for toy cars

My sons loves driving their cars round and round the room. One day I decided to use tape to give them some roads to drive on. B spends so much time making up stories that I wanted to give him a stage for his police vehicles, trucks and buses. It was a huge success and we all had lots of fun with it.

We started with just one road marked on the floor with masking tape. Then we created a ‘T’ junction and then just kept on building across the room. B enjoyed going around with his bus. He stopped in the same place every time for the bus stop - people got on, people got off. Eventually he asked for the tape to mark the stopping place.

We chose a place for a farm so that little R had a place to play too. He likes to drive cars but has no regard for the rules and regulations of the road. He often crawls across the whole set up. B has to wait for ‘the pedestrian crossing the road’ (not always an easy task). Sometimes we build a little train track at one end of our town.
Traffic lights, police stations, fire station, a house with a garden - the additions go on and on. We create different stories every time. The main characters are usually the bus or the police car. B seems to choose depending on his mood. When he has a lot of energy to use up, the police car zooms around with the siren on full blast. There can be a lot of destruction and the noise reaches real siren levels.

At other times the bus drives very carefully around the town. B brings the bus slowly to the stops making sure the tyres are right at the edge of the road. He talks about people getting on and off with prams and dogs. Somebody might be running for the bus so he waits for them - or not!

Lots of fun with an Indoor Snow Storm

The snow arrived and we were all so excited. The first flakes look so lovely as they drift to the street. We couldn’t wait to get out in it. We played in it for a while, then got cold - too cold. All we wanted was to be wrapped up warmly with a hot chocolate. A few days later, I was really pleased with an impromptu indoor snow storm which we created with kitchen paper towels. I love snow, for about five minutes. Indoor snow play is a way to explore texture, create stories and be imaginative without the cold and the wet.

Rabbits in paper snow

It started in the kitchen when B decided, for no clear reason, to rip squares of kitchen paper towel from the roll. I don’t like to stunt his ideas before they develop, so I let him do a few, and then asked him what he was going to use them for. “Don’t know” he replied as he continued ripping. Hmm, I really didn’t want them all on the floor for no reason. I had to think fast: “we could paint on them, or cut some snowflakes, or drive over them -- it’s like snow” Ah ha! There it was. So we went to the boys’ room to drive cars over snow.

B with tube

We had about 10 sheets of kitchen paper towel, so after covering some of the floor and the train track we realised we needed a lot more. I lost my worry of using up one whole roll of paper in a game and asked B to bring the roll for us to use. We had fun ripping each sheet off. We covered lots of things with snow, then had a snowball fight, then filled a box with snow and of course B got in. Little R got involved too and had lots of fun rolling around in the drifts. I would have taken more pictures of the two of them playing so well together, except R refused to let go of my camera!

Box full of snow!

The snow storm started as soon as the kids were out of the box and I threw all the snow out on top of them. “Again, again” laughed B, and this went on for a while. The storm became silly when we mixed other items in with the snow. Soft toys, balls and little star stickers rained down on us all. We ended up throwing the snow all over and around to create a wonderful indoor blizzard.

Boys

Although we couldn’t sledge, ski or ice skate, our imaginations made a beautiful snow scape and we had lots of snow fun without the cold.

Being Creative with Chestnuts and Following the Paths of the Imagination

Over the last few week chestnuts have been hammering down from the enormous tree behind our apartment. One collection gave us over 300 of these beautiful fruit. I wanted to make some chestnut figures of animals and people. (kikisweb.de gave me some knowhow.) But we actually ended up making roads and racing cars around.

Sticking in Cocktail Sticks

To make animals with chestnuts I needed scissors and cocktail sticks. I used the scissors to make a little hole in the outer shell and then the cocktail stick went in pretty easily, but not easily enough for a three year old to do. I had to press the stick in with the hard floor, and it often broke, and it was hard to remove. So for my three year old it got a little boring. He liked making people, but the “little man” wouldn’t stand up, so we made it into a snowman. We also made a spider and a cat. There is a special tool available for making holes, but I didn't order it in time! Try this Drill for Chestnuts if you need one.

Snowman

Spider

Cat

The next day I started to make a train, but it looked more like a caterpillar, and he was more interested in rolling around in a big pile of chestnuts. So that is what he did.

Big Pile of Chestnuts

Then we counted them. This became a really interesting activity for him. We had never had so many things to count before and he was interested in how we could possibly count so many items! We put them in rows of 10 as he is comfortable with this number. He helped as we went up to 100.

100 Chestnuts

Then he watched as I did some more rows, then played around with his cars as I did the rest. In the end he politely listened as I told him how many we had (316) and then drove his bus straight though them all. He loved destroying the neat rows!

Bus in Chestnuts

So we made some roads as he wanted to transport some chestnuts in his trucks. We drove them along the paths we made. This was such a simple thing to do yet sparked his intrest. As he drove his cars around, he moved carefully and with great control so as not to destroy the road edges.

Loading a Truck with Chestnuts

Road Made with Chestnuts

Later on we came back to the sea of chestnuts and explored them in more detail. When I started drawing faces on them, he gave them names. Then we made up a few stories with them. Again we had found an unplanned game and created a lot of laughter.

Faces on Chestnuts

Much of the play we did with the chestnuts was made up as we went along. I had wanted to make more things and get crafty, but maybe next year he will be a more willing sculptor. This year, pretend play is definitely top of the list.

Cars Driving through Chestnuts

Our big box of chestnuts gave us many surprise opportunities for counting, pretending and conversation. My first thoughts had been to make things, stick things and create something to keep. But sometimes I have to remember that the creative process takes different paths, often unexpected paths, and each one is food for the imagination.

Making a Play Park with Play Dough

We love going to the play park and have already spent many sunny days playing on swings and slides and climbing over climbing frames this summer. So I wasn’t really surprised when our play dough became a play park one rainy afternoon. I was inspired by Puttisworld to try some construction with cocktail sticks and play dough. I was hoping to talk about squares and triangles, but imagination took hold and we ended up with a mini play park.

This is our recipe for play dough:
2 cups flour
½ cup salt
2 tbsp oil
1 ½ cup boiling water
Squeeze of lemon juice
Generous splash of red food colouring


I adapted this from one I found on The Imagination Tree where you can find many recipes and wonderful ideas for play dough play.


So, we started with this:

Pink Play Dough and Cocktail Sticks

And ended up with swings:

Play Dough Swings

A slide:

Play Dough Slide

Balancing bars:

Play Dough Balancing Bars

And an interesting climbing frame:

Play Dough Climbing Frame

Actually, I did most of the design work and B made interesting shapes with the dough (the climbing frame is all his) but we had a great conversation while working with the play dough and I hope I sparked his creativity for the possibilities of play dough.

Quick Finger Puppets

I got this idea from Red Ted Art, a place jam packed full of wonderfully creative ideas for little children.

Cardboard finger puppets
Material: small piece of cardboard, tape, pen

1. Find a piece of card and cut it into a long thin strip, about 5cm long. Anything will do, we used the sides of an egg carton, but any packaging box would work.
2. Draw a face on the strip. We had a happy face and a sad face, but any face which suit’s the current phase would increase the fun: dinosaur, animal, Dr. Seuss etc
3. Tape the strip onto a finger. Using a different inger each time would work the muscles in all fingers, but some would be hard work for little ones.
4. Play. You could role play, tickle, fight, chase, chat, dance…

Underground Train

We live in a big city with an underground train. My son loves it. He loves anything associated with trains. He must spend 90 percent of his time playing alone ordering his trains, cars and buses around the room. I decided to do something to add to his playtime which we could work on together. So we built our own U-Bahn (underground train in Berlin).

A while ago I spent an early Saturday morning drawing on a dissembled cardboard box to make a road and car park for all his cars. We took this, some empty toilet rolls and some tape, and started talking about how to go about it. It took a while to put enough rolls in place (it was a big box), and I had to do most of the work as it was a little tricky for a two year old. He started playing with something else in the room as I finished, but once I was done he was very pleased with his new toy.

The rolls looked a little like the pillars we see in some stations, and it was pretty dark under the cardboard so it looked quite realistic. It was a little wobbly, but this made him think carefully about his movements in and around the structure. The road on top became the way into the space inside the train track, where there was a shopping centre and a bus stop, according to him.

I loved watching him move around - on tiptoe, bending this way and that, peeking through the tunnel, reaching in to move the train. He made up a story about a man in a van. All in all, he practiced quite a few skills. These are some I noted:

• He used his limbs in different ways developing his fine and gross motor skills.
• He created stories by himself expanding his imagination and vocabulary.
• He watched me make a whole new level to his play area with a bit of card and some tape increasing his capacity for creative thinking.

We spent the next few days improving on the underground train to make it stronger and more adaptable to changes in the track.