Well, we found out this morning that Daddy would not be home until late tonight and so I decided that today might be a good day to do this. I showed Seth the idea on the blog link above and he loved it and was excited about it.
So I printed out all the templates on white cardstock. I had the boys color them with markers. I then cut then cut them out and laminated them (so that they would last longer).
The boys wanted to play on the floor but Alyssa kept messing up everything so I cleared the table so that they could set it up there! It kept them busy for quite a while! I think this will be a good rainy day activity in the future!
And I feel pretty good that I was able to provide my kids with new toys today - without spending a single penny!!
(They used their roadmap rug to set up everything on)
(Seth liked flying his helicopter over the city)
(a close up of one of the city, people and cars)
Like I said I got the idea from this blog post. I printed off 4 copies of the city template. One copy of the people template will give you two sets of the people).
On this post was the template for the vehicles (one copy of the template will give you two sets of vehicles).
On this post was the template for the helicopter (one copy will give you two helicopters and one landing pad. The post has directions for making the helicopter so it can "fly")
Of course, as I was cutting out everything my mind was being flooded with other ideas that you can do. I kept thinking about in a couple of years when we get to studying different countries how we can draw city scenes from the different countries (e.g. adobe homes from Mexico, cottages from Germany, etc...)...and either find or make a world rug and have our people travel all over!! I mean these cities are just simple pen drawings...I should be able to do that right??
Oh the possibilities!
Hopefully I have gotten someone else's mind working and thinking of ideas as well!! If you have thought of any ideas please feel free to share :-)
Cool! We did that a couple years ago, I covered the table with brown craft paper and drew roads and parking lots and used empty cardboard juice and soymilk cartons as buildings, and just got out all the cars! Kept the kids busy for two days!
ReplyDeleteVery nice. The link with doll pictures will sure come in handy. Now I just need a Rug. Many rugs at http://zenseeker.net/Kid/PlaySurfaces.htm
ReplyDeleteMaybe I can make a rug out of a blanket and markers?
If you make your own city rug out of a light colored blanket and markers, you'd have the perfect low budget setup. Rug examples at http://zenseeker.net/Kid/PlaySurfaces.htm
ReplyDelete