Road Stamps
2 and up: Learning - Social Interaction: Open Ended
Road Stamps
Intro
Lay the foundation for little cartographers and civic engineers! Using road stampers en- courages logical reasoning, creativity and social skills as children plan their paths, stamp them up and travel along them with toy cars.
Set Up ideas
There are many ways to prepare this activity in order to encourage effective collaboration and interaction. One idea is to use a very large sheet of butcher paper that multiple children can collaborate on. Another would be to give each child their own sheet to create their own layout, and then combine children’s layouts to create one very large, sprawling map!
Let’s Get Started
Depending on your class size, the abilities of your students and the time you have, there are several ways to encourage collaboration and interaction. Children may take turns using stampers to complete the pattern shown on a card, or they may start on different sides of a paper and connect their separate roadways together.
STEP 1
Roll out a roll of butcher paper onto the floor or a tabletop surface.
STEP 2
Use the cards and stampers provided in the Colorations® Road Stamper Activity Set to stamp out road designs. Children may also create their own freeform designs without the use of the pattern cards.
STEP 3
Once the stamped roadways are dry, use the cars provided in the kit or any other classroom vehicles for open-ended play. Block play figures and signs are also a fun addition to help bring the children’s cities to life!
Discuss the paths that your little civic engineers make with their stampers. Encourage them to create intersections with multiple options and diverging paths. If the children are creating separate paths, encourage them to join their maps together and travel between each other’s cities.
Tips and Tricks
Tips and Tricks: Expand this activity by creating an entire city or town by drawing buildings alongside the stamped roads. Build your city vertically by using other materials to make 3D structures. Try using art cartons for buildings and craft rolls with green construction paper for trees.
Follow up Activity
A terrific follow-up to this activity is exploring directions. First, have children drive a car along a road until it splits or turns. As the car changes directions, have them tell you whether the car is turning left or right. This can become challenging when the car is not facing the same direction as the children.
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