If you want a group of 4-5 year olds to look at you like you are crazy, pull out the paint and the box of cars on the same day and tell them you’re going to paint with the cars. But once the intent of the project is made clear every one is delighted to try this “new” idea!
For this craft you will need:
- Paper. Rolls of craft paper or butcher paper work well. The day Bug did this I just used small sheets of painting paper and laid them out overlapping. It worked fine and he had several pieces of artwork when he was finished.
- Paint. Just your standard, kid-friendly (washable!) tempra paint.
- Paper plates. One for every color of paint you are using.
- An assortment of toy cars/trucks. Tips for picking vehicles:
-Textured or grooved wheels work best. Look at toy monster trucks, construction trucks, etc.
-Bigger wheels are good. The cars I use at school at the toddler sized Fisher Price Little People construction trucks. They have big wheels with big grooves.
-Plastic! Plastic wheels and plastic cars! Give it a once over and ask yourselfWill this be easy to clean? It’s fairly simple to clean them when you’re finished as long as there aren’t any small places for paint to get into. Also, metal cars don’t like water.
After you have gathered your supplies, squirt some paint on the plates, let them roll their cars through the paint and then over the paper. Ta-da! Tracks!
Tip: It’s natural for them to want to push the car back-and-forth, back-and-forth, on one spot of the paper over and over again. Naturally, this will make a mess. I encourage them to place their car at the edge of the paper and push it all the way to the other edge. This makes neater tracks. We discuss words like “up, down, left, right, across, around” to describe how we are driving the cars on our paper.
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