Inside activities for kids become very common and necessary during the cold winter months. Today I’m sharing a fun spin on playing with toy cars indoors- a homemade ramp. And if you’re feeling really daring, why not turn your car ramp into a winter play area…indoors!
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*This post was originally published on December 10, 2013 and has since been updated.
This last week has been one of the coldest we’ve had here for quite a few years. Although there was no snow (our fingers were crossed for it though), it’s been so cold we haven’t been spending as much time outdoors as usual. So I’ve been trying to come up with fun inside activities for the kids. (This post contains affiliate links.)
Just yesterday the kids and I had tons of fun playing with toy cars. Hot Wheels and other toy vehicles are one of Theo’s favorite toys, so they’ve been getting lots of use lately. I thought I’d put a fun spin on his car play by making a homemade ramp for the toy cars!
I bought a 20 inch x 30 inch white foam board from our local store. (You can find these at a craft store or sometimes at a Dollar Store.) I drew two roads going down the board using Sharpie markers, propped it up against the kid-sized table and taped it in place. We grabbed some toy cars and were ready to play!
After a bit of regular car ramp play (which is super fun as it is), I decided to surprise the kids and have it snow for our cars indoors! I had a small bag of iridescent snowflake sprinkles and a few glittery foam balls that I put at the top and bottom of our car ramp. (You will most likely get pretend snow over more area of your house than you think- so be sure to choose a play space that’s easy to clean. We used an area of our house with wood floors so it was easy to sweep and vacuum up.)
First they started by racing cars down the ramp and watching them land in the snow!
Then Lucy thought it would be fun to cover the ramp with snow for the cars!
After lots of car drives through the snow storm, Theo came back with something even bigger!
It was fun making the giant school bus go up the ramp!
Once the bus needed to rest, the cars were back in action! Lucy loved building piles of snow at the bottom of the ramp for the cars to go through. And sometimes so created snowstorms for them to race through down the ramp! They had such a blast playing with their snowy toy car ramp!
And clean up actually wasn’t that hard. Lucy wanted to save as much snow as possible so she filled up a big baggie with it. Theo collected all the foam balls. Then I swept up as much I could, and a few passes with the vacuum and we were back to normal.
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Ramps are so much fun. I never would have thought to do something like this! Looks like they had a blast!
I love how you added snow to your ramp exploration! I hope you’ll consider linking this post up to our Christmas science challenge. Snow and Christmas go so well together. 🙂
This is adorable! I know my little guy would love it!