Playdough Car Maze

I always try to keep a stock of my homemade playdough in the fridge for quick play set up when I am too tired to set up anything else for my boy or when I have nothing else planned or when he generally just asks to play with playdough! 

Playdough makes for a great free-play item. I have setup our simple playdough boards several times for him and it has always been loved. 

This time around too, we took out our stash of playdough and began making random shapes and forms out of the different coloured balls. Finally, we made them into long cylinders and shaped them into little spirals like chaklis or murukus! What a fabulous exercise it served as for our wrists and hand muscles.   

The bigger ones were made by me while the littler ones were made by the Mini. Once these spirals were made, I was just about pack them off back into their storage box when an idea struck me! I rolled out each spiral and made them into long pipes. I grabbed our white board and started placing these pipes on the board forming tiny roads.... I made a tiny maze for the Mini's toy vehicles!

I had real fun planning this mini maze for him with little dead-ends, bends and tracks. The riot of colours on the white board was just pleasing to the eye.

Mini had a riot of a time tracing the maze with each of his vehicles, exploring the dead-ends and turns along the way :)

How I set it up:

Before actually getting to make the maze, have fun with playing with the dough. Rolling out the dough balls is a great workout for the tiny wrists. Let your little one help you there and have fun doing this together.

Well, there isn't really a clear cut rule or template here on how you want to create the maze :) I just used the spirals that we made out of playdough, unrolled them and used the long cylinders to make tiny tracks. I just went with the flow and created a maze which had a start point and an end point. 

I added in tiny curves and threw in some dead-ends just to make the maze a little more exciting to explore. He loved maneuvering his little trucks to the dead-ends and then reversing them back on  the right track! :D

The joy on his face was priceless! 

It always always amazes me of how happiness lies in the smallest of things for these little humans! :)