Let’s make a car maze play mat with kids! Making a maze with kids is always fun and develops critical thinking along with fine motor skills. Preschoolers are going to love helping to make this fun car maze play mat. Make the road maze in any size for your favorite cars and trucks and then play for hours. This maze drawing activity works great at home or in the classroom.
Make a Maze Drawing
When I was a kid, my mom made a homemade car playmat using a big piece of green felt and a black Sharpie marker. It was a simple 2 color map that resembled our neighborhood streets, cul-de-sac and nearby parking lot. My brother and I spent hours playing on that car maze with our Matchbox cars and block city.
Related: Mazes for kids
Creating a car maze today is a little more elegant, but it all comes down to the hours of play kids will put in on something that catches their imagination!
How to make a car maze play mat
Here are easy directions on how to create a maze. After we made the maze we got our toy cars out and had a blast. Keep the maze simple, or decorate it using colorful markers. You could even add cardboard tunnels, bridges, and more.
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Supplies needed to make a car maze play mat
Instructions for making a car maze play mat
Toddlers can help drawing lines with the ruler and pencil, and coloring in trees and houses. This is a great activity to do together.
Step 1
The first step is to create the route for your road maze. Use a pencil and ruler to draw the lines. You can erase any that don’t work until you get your maze just the way you want it. Don’t forget to add dead ends.
Craft tip: Place the largest car you’ll be driving on the road onto the card stock as a guide for the width of the roads. Keep moving the car and turning it as you draw the lines.
Step 2
Once you have your final design worked out, trace over it using the marker and ruler.
Step 3
Decorate your play mat using colored pencils. You can add houses, buildings, lakes, parks, a hospital, a shopping mall, and more!
Our finished car maze play mat
Get your toy cars out and have a blast!
To enrich this activity, have the kids take turns giving each other or you directions. Solving mazes are great for developing problem-solving skills as well as learning spatial reasoning and discerning between lefts and rights with our kiddos!
Prep Time
5 minutes
Active Time
1 hour
Total Time
1 hour 5 minutes
Difficulty
easy
Estimated Cost
$0
Materials
- Poster board
- Pencil
- Eraser
- Markers
- Ruler
Instructions
- Place the car you will be using on the poster board. As you move it around the track use the ruler and pencil to draw a road. Make sure to add in lots of dead ends.
- Once you have your final road design, trace over it with a black marker.
- Decorate around your road with markers to make trees, houses, buildings, lakes, parks, and more.
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Have you made a car maze with your kids? How did it turn out?