Monster Trucks vs Nature

Combining my son's favourite vehicles with play dough and items found on a nature walk made for great loose parts play.

Monster Trucks vs Nature loose parts play.

What you need:

- a selection of monster trucks and small cars

- home-made 'dirt dough' (made mixing 2 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup salt, 2 cups boiling water, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, and brown food colouring)

- wooden ramp / bridge

- rocks, bark, sticks and tree trimmings from the garden

My son was so excited by the set up!

How it works:

This is simply an invitation to play with loose parts. All I did was set up all the materials and then took a big step back to let my son explore how to use the materials and what to build with them.

At first he enjoyed using the wooden ramp and making his monster trucks fly through the air.

Flying monster truck.

Then he started to explore the play dough and natural materials by making a big ditch which lots of the cars got stuck in.

Adding natural materials to the dirt dough.

He enjoyed cars getting stuck in the 'ditch' and rescuing them.

Finally my son decided to make an obstacle course that the monster trucks had to drive around. We had lots of fun timing the different trucks to find out which one was fastest.

Driving around the obstacle course.