Car Play

Liam loves cars, trucks, buses, tractors, planes and trains - pretty much anything that goes!  Ever since he could crawl and push a truck, that's what he does - all the time!

He plays with them at home, at daycare and at grandma's house.  When we are out, he looks out window of the truck and watches them on the roads and in the parking lots.

This is just part of the parking lot that used to be our living room!

Every car or truck he owns is his favorite at some point.  

If they are big, he loads them up with smaller things.  If they are small, he loads them up onto bigger trucks.  

He tries to get the dogs to play cars with him.  He drives the small cars across the cat's back.  He shows them to the rabbits.

As far as Liam is concerned, life without toy cars wouldn't be worth living!

Sometimes we even have to have dinner with cars.

We gave in and despite the age recommendation of 3 plus, we bought him hot wheels cars.  

A portion of the ever growing collection!

His play is so advanced for his age as he loads small cars one at a one onto a bigger truck and pushes it across the room.  One by one, he unloads the cars and lines them up before pushing them across the floor (or table), one at a time.  

Even with these little cars, he knows to turn them facing forward before driving them anywhere.  And if they don't drive as well as he would like, he turns them upside down to check the wheels.

He would carry his cars with him everywhere if he could!  He says good bye to them when we leave the house.  He says good night to them at bedtime.  The first thing he does when we come home from daycare is look for his little cars.  

He always wants to play with ALL of them.  So far, he only has 10, but he always knows when one is missing and he will look for it and insist that we look for it until they are all found.

He loads them into anything he can to carry them around, his Frankenstein Halloween bag, a pail, his block wagon all make wonderful car carriers.  

The back of the couch becomes a highway and the arms turn into parking lots on a regular basis.  And he has discovered that he can pull the cushions off the couch and use it as a driving area.  That's great fun because it makes space for all the bigger vehicles!

Daddy and I are taking advantage of this love for little cars and using them to work on colours and counting skills.  So far, everything is yellow or green and his counting consists on "2, 3 go!" but everyone has to start somewhere.

I can't begin to imagine where car play is going to take us as Liam gets older and develops more language skills and starts to show more imagination!  But I am looking forward to seeing what roads my little boy's car obsession leads us down in the future.

And Santa, if you are reading this, Liam wants to stocking full of hot wheels cars in a good variety of colours!  He doesn't know it yet, but his cars are a good learning tool!

He is very particular about how his cars get parked.  I parked these ones after he pushed them across the floor to me and then he had to fix them because I didn't do it right!