It’s been a while since Veronika showed interest in her toy cars. So hoping to spur some play with them, today we made a whole town for her to drive cars through!

To start, I unrolled a long sheet of butcher paper on the ground, taping it at the corners. (Note: I’ve also seen this activity done on a table with a white board top, in which you can use dry-erase markers and wipe clean when finished). Veronika was delighted as we piled cars onto the paper to populate our town!

I started with a long black line for the main road, and showed her examples of buildings we could draw, including a few simple houses. Before I even prompted her, she drove a purple car to the purple house…

…and a green car to the green one!

We added buildings based on the other vehicles in our bin, including a school for the bus and a fire station for the fire trucks. At this point, you can encourage preschoolers or older kids to draw their own favorite buildings or destinations.

Next Veronika wanted to walk along the road. There was a giant in town!

Then she requested a beach, jsut like the one we visit in real life. That’s the brilliance behind the DIY road map, because kids can add their own favorites to this make-believe world. We also needed a construction site full of “dirt” (yellow and black marker) for her dump truck and digger.

Don’t forget to throw in a little learning about road safety. To wit, we had an octagonal stop sign at our town’s main intersection.

Once the drawing and creating is complete, a giant road like this can lead to imaginative play all day. Big brother Travis even got down to play with cars, which he hasn’t done in ages.