Fun with Tire Tracks

A friend and I have been getting together roughly twice a week to do some pre-school activities with our kids since neither of us enrolled our kids in preschool.  It's been a fun excuse to play with friends and some needed motivation to actually pull out some fun preschool activities.  (I've been long on ideas and short on motivation lately.)  Between us there are four of our own kids, plus another little boy who she babysits.

Since both boys LOVE cars, I decided to dust off some car books.  I'd seen an idea several months ago for using wheels from toy cars to make tracks, and been wanting to try it.

We started out reading What Do Wheels Do All Day? by April Jones Prince and My Big Truck Book by Roger Priddy.  They're both fun books and ones we already had on our shelf.  Any similar books would work just fine too.  I pulled out a bunch of our kids toy vehicles and we talked about the jobs each one would do if they were real.

Then we headed outside, spread a big piece of butcher paper on the ground, splattered some poster paint on it...

...and let the kids drive through it with their cars.  I tried to make sure the cars we'd chosen had interesting tire markings and looked different (because surprisingly most toy tires are pretty boring.)

They had a blast...

...especially our two car crazy boys.

 

About the middle of the project we had some really nice tire tracks.

Toward the end Little Brother decided to try out his bike tires.  In the end, the paper had been thoroughly run over and torn from getting damp from the paint, so it wasn't a work of art to keep.  The kids loved it though.

If you're looking for some tamer versions, you might check out this one from Tonya at Celebrate-Create-Explore using stamp pads and tires to make wrapping paper.

Or this one that The Girl Who Painted with Trees shared during our Read-Along earlier this year.