Ideas for playing cars with a vehicle-mad two-year-old

[andana]

2.5 year old DS loves toy cars / vehicles and lately I am getting “mummy, play cars!” constantly. It’s lovely and I have tried lots of imaginative play etc but running out of ideas and there have been no other car mad little boys in the family / friends kids to get inspiration from.

Could any of you with similar car mad little ones give me some suggestions of play / game ideas? We have done usual ramps, washing cars, pretending they are driving to x / stuck in a traffic jam / racing.

Buy those road pieces that stick together and make different tracks. Hot wheels sets from Vinted. Encourage him to play by himself by starting games and letting hin finish ti help support his ability to play alone.

Go on your local Facebook selling groups and pick up some cheap hot wheels track or a garage, loads of fun!

Making a garage out of cardboard box and parking the cars
Making a slide for cars out of loo rolls or cardboard boxes
Teaching child what each car badge means then naming all the cars as they drive by and mummy drinks coffee and eats cake
Watching roadworks
Also recommend hot wheels tracks on stairs, around rooms, in the garden etc

Solidarity xxx

I keep a roll of this in my rainy day box, hope the link works

www.sensoryeducation.co.uk/products/bigjigs-roadway-tape?_pos=4&_sid=647a8fd37&_ss=r

I used to mix coca powder, a bit of flour and water to make "mud", then let my DS get them all dirty before then washing them.

I also used to freeze cars in a block of water for rescuing with warm water or my throwing them at the ground (which he loved 🤣) I would also freeze their wheels in water and freeze a flat tray of water for a ice rink element to the play.

And then encouraging play alone, coz it did my head in

Mine used to love just parking his cars in a makeshift carpark marked out on the carpet with little bits of wood or straws 🤣

Have you found 5 minute mum? She uses cardboard and cars to teach stuff like colour/number/letter recognition. So draw out a track on cardboard, have some labelled parking spaces (whatever you're trying to learn) and then encourage the kid to park the car in the correct spot. We used to enjoy that one.

There are other ideas on Pinterest for building things from cardboard for playing with cars. Making ramps up stairs etc. Using a kitchen roll tube or bit of guttering brings a different level to the fun.

Building a track/garage out of Duplo or Magnatiles.

The Speed Track is a pretty cool present idea. Ours is going strong, must be 5 years later!

Car hide and seek?!

Make moon sand : 2 cups of plain flour to 1/4 cup baby oil.

Any cup, it's not baking, it's a ratio that the main thing

Then get a play tray and some toy diggers and mini traffic cones (don't hate me but super cheap on Amazon)

= Mini building site

Watch Helper Cars on Youtube for some ideas of minor problems where cars can ‘rescue’ each other. My DS was car mad at that age and loved lining them up everywhere. Another thing he liked was brumming them up and down his keyboard and xylophone to make noises with them. Is it him getting bored or you? When he was 2, DS would park cars in lines forever if I left him to it. 😅

DS was the same at that age. Thankfully he was usually happy building a car park on the coffee table.

He did love our car. We had a Toyota at the time and I made the car badge and number plates from paper and I’d stick them on his clothes and he’d run around the garden pretending to be the car.

A mixture! He wants me to play with him and I’m running out of steam a bit with scenarios we can “play.” So it’s for his entertainment but also mine, so I’m not sitting on the carpet for an hour making “brum” noises 😂 he does play independently with them nicely & I have a playmat with a road scene he loves but it’s really helpful to have some of these suggestions to make it more fun for him and less monotonous for me! Thankfully he loves outdoor play too so that breaks it up a bit!

My son used to make a ramp out of a piece of card propped up on the sofa....also second hot wheels track on eBay or any selling site. Keeps them amused for quite a while!

Has he got realistic cars? I mean does he have a die cast version of your car so you can start teaching him to read the car manufacturer symbols like Ford, Toyota etc? My kids knew all the major car symbols before they started reading words.

We make car parks and garages out of recycling. He’s 5 now so he makes more of it himself, but I remember building them when he was two with him rummaging about in a bag of recycled bits and bobs “helping”. Boxes piled up for a multi-storey, various sizes of cardboard ramps, and tunnels made out of cardboard tubes. It can become an ongoing project you can add to for days.

We also have magnet tiles and road magnet tiles. Kinetic sand is another fun one for making dirt tracks and rallies for them to race about in. Or fling him in the bath with a load of cars.

Cars are so bloody tedious though. My favourite thing is to let him pick a handful to take to the park and then leave him to it.

So glad I posted both for the ideas and to find out I’m not the only one that finds playing cars a bit mind numbing! Give me Duplo any day 😂

This is a great idea - he correctly identifies the same model as Grandad’s car, daddy’s car etc when out and about, he has a big tub of random cars, hot wheels, more childlike ones etc but I will start hunting down some more realistic ones!

We used a tray of cous cous (uncooked) with DS with his digger toys for him to dig up and move around the tray

We used to use masking tape to create mazes on the floor and then race to find the exit. The bigger and more creative the maze, the funnier it was.

We also used to create cities so started with the car mat, then added in the train track, then the animals to make farms and zoos etc etc.

If he's into Disney Cars there's some printable colouring in on Twinkl and there might be some on Crayola's website if you have a printer.

Colouring scribbling in gets me 0.5 nanoseconds to drink coffee

Cars in the bath! Whizzing down the side. You can toy tracks that stick to the bath. Add shaving foam for snow mountains.

Another vote for speed track, you can use all your existing cars on it and have races :)
Simple car puzzles? Car books?

Lie down on the floor with a soft pillow and get him to draw a road system on your back and then drive the cars on it whiskey you snooze and get a free massage!

If you take him for a walk get him to look at the car number plates. They’re great way to introduce letters and numbers.

Ha! This has reminded me of taking a bath with my lo and telling him he can make a road on me and drive his cars through the floods... aka 20m of relaxing in warm water while he pushes his cars up and down my legs... happy days lol 😆

Car mat, car track, put the cars in the sand and have a 'rally' (my son was train mad at 2 and still is at 24 lol) Have a look on eBay etc for job lots or your local free cycle for things people are passing on. Big sheet of paper and crayons, design a 'race track' , get some air dry clay and he can make bits and pieces, widen it out to other transport (Playmobil is really good for different 'scenes' and has cars, camper vans etc)