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!

How can we be creative? Let me count the ways.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted. The winter has been a long one, and it’s not finished yet. We had yet another snowfall last weekend and the low temperatures create sheets of ice for the morning trip to nursery school. We’ve been spending a lot of time at home, playing with things with wheels and reading lots of books. We have built lots of train tracks and developed a few towns. What we haven’t done it a lot of craft activities. However, I started to realise, once again, that my ideas of creativity are not always the same as my childrens’ and that there are many many ways to use your imagination.

Two Boys with a Bus

Nursery school has been the biggest change for us recently. B’s first day was at the beginning of September last year and our schedule had to be worked around that. He was so tired every afternoon that he wasn’t really in the best mood for anything crafty. In addition, his main interest has been pretend play. He loves cars and trains and buses. He spends hours a week driving them around his room making up stories.

Little R is walking now and ready for anything! I have done some painting with him and we sometimes experiment with different materials, trying to build things with them. But I really haven’t done as much creative work with him as I did with B. Partly because he is one of two so there is always another little boy to look out for, who doesn’t like doing messy creative things, and partly because he is much more unpredictable than B. He sees his big 3 year old brother pushing the boundries and he copies everything. Not a great situation for experimenting with paint!

While I love to paint, cut and glue, B has been showing me how driving cars and building train tracks is also good for, if not better for, his creativity and imagination skills. Watching him work and helping him solve problems has been an education for me as he develops his language, refines his co-ordination and practices telling stories.

Introducing R to paint and glue is going to be on my list over the next few months. When he plays with his big brother he gets lots of practice pushing things around and making loud siren noises. I think we’ll add some colour to the playroom walls to reflect their big bright personalities.

So we have lots to do, and lots of opportunities to take photos and fill my blog posts with great pictures!

B with one of his favourite things - the Berlin U-Bahn

Matching and Measuring with Toy Vehicles

I’m always on the hunt for activities involving vehicles. Although I love watching my son drive them around while making up stories, I like to encourage other play too. He has enjoyed matching things for a while now, and has recently become very interested in ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller‘, so when I found a matching and sizing game with circles on one of my favourite sites: Irresistible Ideas for play based learning. I couldn’t wait to give it a go and then try to involve his cars.

First he helped me choose an assortment of vehicles of different sizes. This took a while as we talked about how to measure them and how many we needed to fit onto a piece of A3 paper. After sorting, measuring and arranging we ended up with 13 vehicles.

The Chosen Cars

Then he watched as I drew around them. He enjoyed this as asking for us to draw around things has been a favourite of his for a long time. Thirteen vehicles on one piece of paper was a thing of wonder for him.

After drawing around all the vehicles

I drew with pencil first but then went over it with pen to create a good photo. I did find that I lost some of the detail that the pencil picked up though, so I would definitely draw in pencil next time.

Then I left everything out for him to play with when he wished. I wanted him to have a go straight away, but he was too busy driving the ‘car bus’ (a huge truck he uses to transport cars) as some of the cars had broken down and needed a lift to the mechanic! He did do it eventually, I just had to be patient:

All in place

We had lots of fun with this activity and I can imagine doing it again with other objects. He enjoyed the original circle idea, so we will try other shapes too. Themes would be fun too, like food or painting equipment. Even if we collected random object from around the house or park, I think we would benefit greatly from this simple matching game.

Driving Cars on Corrugated Card

I’m not sure if this is an activity or just a really easy way to fill some time, or both! We started off looking for some cardboard to frame a couple of photos. B chose the corrugated sheet and was immediately engrossed with it. He scratched it, poked at it, twisted it. We had used corrugated card before, but it was a while ago, and I could see a new fascination with it.

It seemed counterintuitive to stand and watch or give comment. So I left him alone. A long while later I found him driving his cars from one end of the room to the other, across the corrugated card to a parking lot on the carpet. He had also drawn on the card since I had left. He looked very happy and completely engrossed in his work.

Later, as I took photos, he told me all about the cars’ journey and how they went bumpity bump across the card.

Completely Engrossed

Bumpity Bump Bump!

Definite Boundaries

When reading about encouraging creativity, a common theme is allowing kids to make mess. This is not something I am against. In fact I actively encourage it, but then B is not particularly messy. Even so, I like the idea of allowing mess within boundaries, as all art needs a frame - especially a two year old’s first attempts at abstract art.

One lovely sunny afternoon my son was being the artist with his diggers and trucks on the balcony. The dirt I had given him was finding it’s way across the whole area. It was the first time I’d managed to get out there this Spring so I really wanted to give it a good tidy and clean. The mess spread, my sweeping became pointless and my patience was waning.



Then I found the chalk. The previous few days had been all about shapes, so I drew some more for him. A very big square. I called it his mess box and swept all his dirt into it. He then insisted on boxes for all his vehicles. It was a serious task as all vehicles need a good parking place, don’t they? And after that he was happy to play in his mess box long enough for me to clean the balcony.


As he played in his box, I saw how he had to find solutions to his games: Roads had to be rerouted, building sites contained and footsteps carefully placed. I’m not sure, but maybe he made more mess than usual because he had his very own mess box.

B did these things:

• Talked about shapes and sizes when measuring all the boxes we drew
• Found a way to play within a restricted zone
• Moved his body in news ways as he navigated the small(ish) space
• Created new storylines for his diggers, cars and buses
• Gained some confidence in his own independence while he played alone
• Enjoyed making a mess within a set boundary

Paint Bags

My son is going through a phase of not liking messy hands. My image of enjoying crazy painting, gooey play and sticky craft with my two year old has been shattered. It is also making me think differently about crafts and how to make it fun for him - not just for me!

We tried using ziplock bags for mixing paint and enjoyed it, until the bag developed a hole. However, my son seemed a little disappointed about not having something to keep at the end.

As it is Spring, most of the craft ideas I see are about flowers and butterflies. These are things he likes, but what he really loves is vehicles. So I cut three pieces of card to fit three bags, drew a (very basic) picture of a car, a bus and a train on them and we were ready to go.

The first bag, the car, got all the colours sqeezed in - red, blue, yellow and white. The second was only given blue as it was a train and that is what colour Thomas is! We didn't get round to doing the bus. We did them one at a time, pressing down on the paint so it spread across the picture. The colours on the car didn't mix quite as much as I had hoped, but the effect was interesting as we cut open the bag and pulled the plastic away. The paint on the train soaked right into the cardboard showing the pattern underneath.

Sometimes I think he enjoys preparing the activities more than doing them. He talked a lot about the measuring and cutting, and then was quiet during the spreading of the paint. I have to really hold my tongue to stop myself telling him what to do. I always have an idea what I want to achieve but have to remind myself that it is his actions and not the finished work that counts!

Some things we achieved:

• talking about size and shape when cutting the cardboard to fit in the bags
• discussing different vehicles that he wanted me to draw, and parts of the vehicles
• choosing colours for the vehicles and how much paint to put in the bag
• using fingers and palms to move the paint around
• learning about colours mixing and liquid moving
• I had practice in not telling him how to make his art

The results are pretty good and look interesting on the wall. It's a really simple and quick activity. I was disappointed that we couldn't see the pictures well underneath the paint, but maybe we can find a solution to that through a brain-storming session beforehand, hmm. It's something we can do often and find different techniques.