Toy vehicles are a perennial favourite with children of all ages. Give your charges a box of miniature cars, tractors and lorries and you are likely to enjoy a long spell of peace and quiet as they get stuck into creating their own little world.
Small-world play helps children to develop their imaginations and make sense of whatever scenario they have created. For instance, setting up a pretend crash scene with toy vehicles - which children don't do as morbidly as we adults might think - allows them to explore the movements, sounds and emotions of such an incident, and have tremendous fun. For this reason it's important to give children the time, space and freedom to play independently.
But there will also be times when imaginations run low on fuel and a bit of adult input goes down well. Watch a child at play and pick an appropriate moment to make some new suggestions - or go one step further, get down on your hands and knees and join in!
MAKING A ROAD SYSTEM
Every vehicle needs a road to drive along. Constructing your own road system is usually more fun than using any plastic ready-made sets, and you can make it as complex or as simple as you wish.
Temporary roads: for an impromptu set up, gather items such as Lego bricks, clothes pegs or pencils. Use piles of books to construct tunnels, bridges and garages. You can also make ramps by leaning a large book against a pile of smaller books.
Permanent roads: for a road system that looks like the real thing, try the following:
* Cut strips of card from old cereal packets.
* Mix up a dark grey paint using black and white and add a little white PVA craft glue to make the paint suitably 'heavy duty'.
* Cover the card with the paint and glue mixture.
* Cut address labels into small strips and stick them on to the centre of the road to make the white lines.
* Use parcel tape to join the lengths of card, sticking the tape on the back and leaving a thin gap so the road can be folded up when not in use.
* Arrange some of the roads at right angles to each other to create side roads and junctions.
* Look through a copy of the Highway Code and choose some road signs to make. Go for signs with simple instructions that children can act upon, such as 'stop', 'give way' and 'no entry'. Cut out pairs of circles, triangles or rectangles and draw on the markings. Glue the matching shapes around one end of a lolly stick and press the stick into a lump of Plasticine or Blu-Tack. Position the signs at appropriate places on the road system and guide the child in making their vehicles obey them.
* Position small-world people and animals around the sides of the roads, and if you're really feeling ambitious, make some roadside buildings out of boxes.
LET THEM ROLL
For those occasions when you want to join in with the child's play, try introducing some of the following play scenarios.
Vehicle words: young children learn a huge amount from talking with adults.
Try to use appropriate words as a natural part of your play - for example, speed up, slow down, reverse, accelerate, crash, siren. With very little ones, stick to simple concepts such as stop and go. Children aged from about four onwards will be interested in learning the names for the different parts of the vehicle, such as boot, bonnet, bumper, as well as identifying different makes of cars.
Horses for courses: help children to set up play scenarios that will enable them to use different vehicles for an appropriate purpose.
* Put lentils and sand in a tray for playing with diggers, bulldozers and tractors.
* Set up a crash scene for ambulances, fire engines and police cars to attend.
* Use string to attach toy figures or cars to a helicopter for air rescues.
* Save bits of broken cars for a crash or garage play scenario.
* When you are out and about, look out for real vehicles and link them with the child's toys, for example, pulling over for a fire engine or passing a building site. Call their attention to road signs, and you will be surprised how soon the child is calling your attention to them and telling you what the signs mean.
Ask mum and dad: get ideas for vehicle play by asking parents and other family members to talk about the games they used to play with their small-world toys (which they may still have up in the loft). Most children love to hear about a parent's childhood, and linking stories with their own lives helps them to develop a sense of their family history.
