Toddler Community Map

Throughout these past few years, we have collected all kinds of toys: people, cars, trains, firetrucks, farm animals, buildings, signs, etc. (You get the point right? I sure hope I’m not the only Mom accumulating all of these toys!) I’m not quite sure where or how we have so much, but it’s true, it’s all here. There are so many “little pieces” that are jammed packed in our toy boxes that I thought it was necessary to pull them all out and play in a, uhm…’organized’ way.

While I was walking through Wal-Mart, I found big pieces of cardboard (for presentations) for $2.99, then I saw different colored duck tape on sale. The light bulb went off in my head and this is how our community map was created. We’ve actually had it for the past year, and bring it out at least once a week.

The black duck tape represents roads and sometimes train tracks, depending upon what the kids want to do. It’s a pretty simple map but it brings a lot of creativity to the children. Now here’s the exciting part Mama’s….

Sometimes, we have to put out the fire….

(The red and flames are duck tape too)

Sometimes, we take a boat ride….

(Also done with duck tape) We park our boats there at the dock 😉

Sometimes, we get ready for school….

Or even visit the farm…

(do you see the farm on the top left?)

We also incorporate the library books into our map as well. We check out 20 library books weekly so if I can sneak it into a “place” like I did for the farm book, I make sure to read it then as well.

Sometimes activities are quite simple and that’s quite okay. It’s so much fun to see how both the children use their imagination and how they have grown. For example, when we made this last year, my son would only push a few cars around on the roads, this year, we have stories and the people do things! When they have a new place of interest or to spice things up, I add something new to the map. We talk about road names, street signs, fire and police stations, how we have to take care of the farm animals, how we hold hands when crossing the street etc. Wherever your imagination takes you, let it go and have fun!