For the last few weeks I have been storing up toilet and kitchen rolls ready for this, and when I decided I had enough lying around the place, I put them to use.
All you need for this is the rolls, tape, some cars and somewhere to set it up. I ummed and erred about this for a while - I could have used my kitchen cupboards but I wanted something a bit higher so I could create more of a slope, however I didn't really want to be taping on the walls. In the end I pulled out oilcloth table cover over the backs of some dining chairs. The was great as the tape wouldn't do any damage and it was a great surface for the track to run down. I then placed a box at the end so the cars didn't fly out all over the place.
I put some tape on each end of the rolls and stuck them down however I fancied. The great thing about this is, if it doesn't quite work, you can move it about and restick it. There were a couple of areas the cars kept getting stuck in, so I just unstuck that roll moved it slightly, and stuck it back down.
The week before I saw some small cars in the supermarket, so bought three and these were the perfect size to fit through the rolls. I tried some of the wooden trains and even some small balls we had but they were too big, so do make sure whatever you want to use fits before you set it all up!
H was at nursery when we tried this, so J was left to his own devices, which he loved.
He thought it was great fun watching the cars fly down and out of the other end, and kept chasing them to see if he could beat them.
He tried piling them all in at once to see what happened and soon learnt they needed to be wheels down if he wanted them to move!
This simple activity took me about five minutes to set up and clear away and kept him busy for half an hour. I think if H had been around they may have played longer together, although there's a good chance there would have been arguments too!
