Keep the Kids Busy with These Fun Car Craft Ideas

Are your kids car-mad? Maybe they can’t wait to pass their test? While driving games, car shows and motorsports may be the most obvious avenues to go down to indulge their hobby, we think a spot of crafting can be an equally good way to keep them busy while encouraging their love of motoring.

Crafting and cars make for an excellent distraction for young petrolheads, and as we zip towards the Christmas holidays, parents need all the distractions they can get. If you aren’t sure where to begin, we’ve put together a guide offering inspiration on fun car craft ideas your youngsters will love.

Design a DIY Toy Car Roadmap

Remember those 90s carpets that kids could play with their toy cars on? Well, it’s possible to create your own version – without giving their bedroom a questionable makeover.

A DIY toy car roadmap is a great project for children with an impressive toy car collection. They can make their play mat as big and complex as they like, and have the perfect place to take their wheels for a spin.

All you need is a few sheets of paper (though card is better), a handful of colouring crayons and your child’s unbridled imagination, and they’re ready to create their very own toy car city. A ruler can help here, too, if they want nice straight streets, while they can also get even more creative by making 3D buildings for their cars to race through.

Draw Their Favourite Cars

Cars are fun to draw, so much so that you might pick up a pencil and have a go yourself. They’re also fairly easy for young artists to get right, and drawing them together is a great time for you to teach your kids more about how they work.

If your youngsters are fairly new to drawing, or haven’t quite cracked doodling cars, it could help to start them off with a basic car drawing video guide, like this one. Once they’ve nailed this simple version, they can then branch out to drawing other cars, as well as their favourite makes and models.

If they’re particularly creative, why not challenge them to invent their own car? This is a great way to keep them occupied while putting their imagination through its paces. Have them think about how the car will run, and things like tyres, aerodynamics and practicality.

Build a Model

Car model kits have been around nearly as long as cars have, and each year thousands are put together by children not yet old enough to drive the real thing. There are even adult versions of kit cars available.

When it comes to car models kits, there are loads of options to choose from, including those from model suppliers like Airfix, Revell and Tamiya. Virtually any car is available as a make-at-home model, so your youngster can have hours of fun building their favourite set of wheels.

For particularly young crafters, you might need to lend a hand with some of the trickier aspects of building a model car, including painting and glueing the components. It’s a great project to take on together, however, and gives you lots of time to fill them in about cars and how they work.

There’s even a great Redex model to make if you fancy trying your hand at this.

Build Your Own Cardboard Car Collection

If your children are a little too young for anything as serious as model kits, they can still have fun putting together their very own cardboard car collection. With a little creativity and imagination, almost any piece of leftover carboard can be transformed into a car, used on the hand crafted car track  and take care of some of that Christmas recycling too.

One of the very best cardboard items to transform into a car is, of course, toilet roll tubes – the unsung heroes of many a crafting project. But how do you turn one into a cardboard car? Let’s take a look…

1. Start by poking two cocktail sticks through the cardboard tube at either end; these are the axles that the wheels attach to. You might need to do this, to protect little fingers.
2. Cut out four circular shapes from sturdy cardboard to use as wheels, and add these to the end of each cocktail stick.
3. Add another rectangular hole on the top of the tube to serve as the car’s cockpit.
4. Now, it’s time for the fun part – decorating their cars!

So there you have it, four simple craft ideas that can keep your car-mad kids busy when they’re stuck indoors. We’d love to see their creations, so drop us a line on the Redex Club Facebook page.

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