Coffee Table Road

This is one we've done quite a lot of over the years, especially when Mr 4 was heavily into cars. Just cover the coffee table with a large sheet of paper, draw a road on there and let the play begin. As the play progresses the kids usually ask for some other things, like a school or park or more traffic lights, but they also really enjoy adding their own drawings to it. We've even sometimes drawn train tracks for the wooden trains, with stations etc. Depending on the age of your child it can also be good to have different coloured car parks for different coloured cars.

Coloured Sand

This is one we made for a birthday present for a little boy who loves craft (although I made sure there would be some leftovers for us to play with).

We got some sand from the sandpit, and sifted out anything large. We divided it into five approximately equal amounts and put it in large freezer bags. We then added food colouring and shook the bags until everything was bright. We poured them into dishes to dry. Finally we bought some cheap salt and pepper shakers and added the sand, ready for making sand pictures.

We also did some coloured rice at the same time, using the same method.

As you can just see at the top of the photo, the kids had a very hard time keeping theirs hands away from it.