5 Ways to Play with Toy Cars

We have hundreds of cars and monster trucks. Cole has an inventory in his head of every vehicle he owns. If he receives a new matchbox car and someone asks if he has it, he will answer yes or no and is right 99% of the time. If he knows he already has it, he has to dig through his bucket of cars to find it. The other day he showed me that he has 4 of the same monster truck. FOUR! He really enjoys playing with them. He will pick out a basket of Thunder Hollow (Disney Cars) or a group of off roaders and bring them downstairs to play. I probably pick up 100 cars a day. They may be the same ones over and over but hey, it keeps him busy. Here are some ideas for playing with cars.

1. Dirt/Mud Driving
Bring them out in the dirt or mud. Everything is better when it is getting dirty. We have a rule that they can't come back in the house until they are cleaned off. They can be cleaned outside or in the bathtub. For some reason, playing in the dirt with the cars keeps Cole's attention for about 3 times as long!

2. Sort by color
With so many cars, it's fun to line them up by color and put the matching ones side by side. And wow, there are a lot of cars. This could take all day!

3. Car Wash
Use shaving cream and send your cars through the sudsy car wash then rinse them clean!

4. Tape Roads
Use masking tape or washi tape and make roads on rugs, on the floor, on tables, on a wall or on a door. We have tape that looks like a road that we got on clearance at O'Reilly's a while back. We have that on the train table as well as our new addition from the target dollar spot - a $3 wall art sticker set with roads, roundabouts, trees, cars etc. We even have a folding table in the basement with roads for when we are all down there too.

5. Car Drawing
Tape a marker to a car so the tip is pointing down and will touch paper. Take the cap off and drive the car along the paper. The best thing we have is a huge ream of packing paper. It comes in so handy for art projects, crafts etc.