Toddler Book and Art Activities

My son is car obsessed!  Really anything with wheels: cars, trucks, motorcycles, bikes, trains, wagons, planes, etc.  He can play cars and trains independently for good chunks of time, and is a little too obsessed with the Cars movies.  While I love that he can play independently so well, this summer, I want to make sure we focus more on books and art, rather than television.  Don't get me wrong, I believe TV has its place, but I want him to see reading and creating are also good quite time activities.  I've decided to combine these two ideas and do crafts based on some great books.  Every week we will pick a new theme, read books based on this theme, and then do crafts centered on the same theme.

 For our first week we did car/train/plane books.  We went to the library Monday, and the book store Tuesday.  Here is what we chose.

Care of Hampton Bays Public Library and Bookhampton

After reading them a million times, and I must admit watching Cars again!, I found some car based crafts from Pinterest.  Ah, how I love Pinterest! JJ and I try to do crafts throughout the year, but the summer is great because not only do I have more time, but painting can be done outside, so less mess.  We chose to make car paintings.  While JJ was napping, I gathered his paints and a bunch of cars.  When he woke, we set up paper on his plastic picnic table outside.  I had to model what to do once, he was a little hesitant about putting his cars in paint, but he quickly got the hang of it.  It was so fun, and I loved the final product.

Hesitant at first, but he quickly got into it!

Totally frame worthy

Since it was outside, I just hosed off the table and the cars and cleanup was done!  I already am looking up more ideas, thinking a cool stoplight collage I saw next.
Check out my Pinterest board for other book based craft ideas.  Happy crafting!