Kids love things that go. When playing with toy vehicles, their creativity knows no bounds! Encourage your child's love of screen-free, independent play this easy DIY toy road for their toy cars, trucks, diggers and busses and all other things that go "Vroom! Vroom!"
The homemade road for toy cars can be as simple or as elaborate as you want, and as a bonus, it helps to keep your child's pretend play in one area of the room. (You might not always need that, but it can come in handy sometimes!)
What you need
Matte board. Head to an art supply store and choose the size you want. Alternatively, you can design and paint your road on a canvas drop cloth.
Pencil
Paint and paintbrushes.
Scissors or x-acto knife (optional)
Instructions
Place the matte board on the floor or large table. If you would like to make the road foldable to make storage easier, lightly score the underside of the board where you want the board to fold.
Using the pencil, sketch out the design of the road. If this road is not a surprise, ask your child for input on how many curves or forks in the road they wish to have.
You'll need to decide if the road will be able to fit two lanes of traffic, and if so, make room for lane dividers, if desired. Our homemade road comfortably fit only one lane of toy traffic.
Paint in the road.
Next, decide on landscaping. Consider that the less landscaping you have, the more blank space your child's imagination will be free to fill. If your child loves to build bridges and buildings, leave a lot of blank space. If they love to include toy animals in their play, perhaps a pond or some trees will be nice.
Or maybe, you don't want to include any landscaping at all. The choice is yours.
MORE TOY CAR FUN:
Lookout cat is optional.
Published 2008, updated 2023.
Julie says
crazy enough, Mr. Intensity played independently on Friday several times. Maybe we're about to break new ground! I hope.
BTW, love the S-shaped traffic jam. I showed Mr. Intensity with hopes that he would try it...we'll see.
Julie says
update: Mr. Intensity is playing by himself again today. woah.
I'm wondering, have you given kiddo his own roll of masking tape? Mr. Intensity has had a blast with it this summer. http://funmajors.blogspot.com/search?q=tape
havingfunathomeblog says
Very cute road system! I can see how that would be a good investment of time!
k says
This comment has been removed by the author.
k says
I would love to put a link to this post on my blog! Could you email me about that? (I would especially like to put an accompanying picture with the post if you wouldn't mind it)
kmagill1212 (at) gmail (dot) com
havingfunathomeblog.blogspot.com
Nellie says
I feel compelled to comment on this post (although I'm late on the scene) because I think our sons might be kindred playmates. We have cars and trucks strewn from one end of our house to the other and they are "organized" in some way that makes perfect sense to my son. I love it, but the clean-up...oh, boy.
By the way, I love your Transportation Tuesday series.