A long time ago I saw this idea in Family Fun magazine, bought what we needed to put it into action and then promptly shoved it away in a closet to be useless for years on end.  Why that happened, I don’t know.  However, despite this little idea being a bit past my kids age, we decided to break it out this week and it has been a blast.  I wonder if your kids might enjoy doing something like this too.

What we did was pull out that very large piece of canvas I had stowed away, along with the fabric markers and created our own personal road map for small cars to drive on.  At this point, will my kids ever drive their hot wheels all over it?  Probably not, but the process was precious to us.

Over the course of the last week, we’ve looked at ideas on-line for road placement and building ideas.  We also brainstormed and took a trip down memory lane about places we’ve been or frequently go–the places that are important to us as a family.  Once we were ready, I drew (with much supervision from my kids) the roads on the our road map.  After that, they took over.  They each spent the whole day yesterday drawing what they felt needed to be on our map.  It was such a blast for me to sit back and listen to them talk about all of these places and share why they thought they should be a part of our personal map.  They worked together in amazing way!

My favorite part of it all was later last night when I stood with The Driver and checked out in detail what they’d deemed worthy of our family map.  It had a bat cave (drawn by The Talker, of course), In-N-Out Burger, Trader J*es, Costco, our church, hospital with helipad, museum, and more.  It even came complete with handiapped parking spaces!  It was such a hoot! I only wish I could get a better picture for you!