Materials Needed:

• Cardboard (flattened box, poster board, etc.)
• Black marker
• Small cars, play people, small play animals
• Small balls
• Rolled up pair of socks

Directions:

Make a roadway or hiking path out of a flattened box. Use a black marker to create a road with your child to use with small cars. If your child doesn’t have small cars you can also make a hiking path to use with play people or small animals.

Let your child play and come up with their own ideas of how they want to extend this idea. Be ready to help them use their imagination to find items to support their ideas. Buildings, trees, picnic….the sky is the limit.

Toddlers

Toddlers will enjoy having a simple roadway to roll things. Cars or small balls work. Try placing a rolled up pair of socks under the box to create an incline so toddlers can learn math vocabulary words like up and down. This is also a hands-on opportunity for toddlers to experiment with the concepts of fast and slow. They will discover they have to push harder to go up, and the car going down is faster. This is a simple engineering experience that can be built upon as children get older.