The obsession with painting toys is real. And why shouldn’t it be? Painting toys is an awesome “make it to nap time activity” and an even better “how are we going to get from naps to dinner?” activity. This round… we decided to paint the cars.

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Paint the cars is one EPIC activity

Some activities (let’s be frank) are just better activities than others.

Painting cars is one of those better activities. It’s unexpected, it’s special, it gives kids ownership and a chance to show their creativity but without the (often) daunting possibilities of a blank sheet of paper.

When kids are painting cars (or any toy for that matter), they’re envisioning it how they wish it could be – and that’s not something they can necessarily get perfectly right on white paper with a pencil. But here, here they can show you a pink race car with blue polka dots just like their imagination wanted.

Have no fear: painting cars does not mean they’ll paint everything

Let’s get something out of the way ASAP: Your kids are not going to take this as an invitation to now paint everything or every toy in the house.

There’s two reasons why:

Reason 1: Kids are amazing with understanding context and understanding that rules vary. They know they can scoop and dump water in the bathtub, but that doesn’t mean they’re splashing water at the dinner table. They get the difference.

It’s the same with painting toys – they understand that this is a fun activity when it’s an activity…it’s not an everyday kind of thing.

Reason 2: it heads kids off at the pass.

My kids have never drawn on walls or marked up toys (shocker). I believe that has a lot to do with activities like this. I was able to have upfront conversations with them about where paint goes and where it doesn’t go, and I didn’t have to wait for them to color on my walls to have that conversation.

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How to set up a paint the cars activity

Materials:

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The best quick decision I made

I decided to give Future Susie (that’s me!) a little help and lined my storage container with paper. I never usually do this – or anything even close to it – but the winds of future clean up hit me and this felt like a great choice.

Spoiler: It was. This made clean up so fast and easy. Past Susie was such a sweetheart for doing that.

On the paper, I squirted out our paints, then carefully lined up a bunch of cars in the center of the tub.

Which cars did for this activity?

I picked metal or plastic cars for this activity – anything that I knew could be painted and washed clean later.

No fabric or wood cars for this activity. No matter how washable the paint… it’s not coming off those materials…

My second genius idea for this activity

Instead of this only being a painting activity, I went for a two-for-one deal: I also made a washing station!

I set a bin of water with tear free soap and scrubby brushes next to the painting project. When my kids were done, they cleaned off the cars.

It was a double win for me: a little longer for the activity AND the kids handles a sizable amount of the cleanup.

Remember when I said this activity was just better than others? Case and point.

How many cars got painted…?

I’m not totally sure but about twice as many as in this picture. My kids (3 and 5) just kept heading back inside looking for more and more cars to paint.

This was like the never ending activity and I love that. The kids loved the activity and were able to keep it going for themselves.

That’s what good activities can do: inspire kids to keep playing.

We love painting toys around here – it has yet to get old! So happy we finally got to paint the cars to see if that was any fun. Good news: it totally was.

When will you kids paint the cars?