20 Cool Car Crafts for Toddlers
Toddlers love cars, and they love them for a reason; they’re fun and cool and come in different sizes, shapes, and colors!
Parents also love giving toy cars to their kids because it easily blends into any play scenario and helps children with their creative and logical skills.
Plus, it also helps them understand the basic concepts of car and road safety, which is an important life lesson that toddlers should learn as early as possible. It can also help kids learn about traffic light signals, road signs, and other car safety measures in a fun way.
If you are looking for fun car crafts for toddlers that can help kick-start their good habits when riding cars and crossing streets, then check out these 20 craft ideas for toddlers and enjoy your bonding time while making something fun together.
Cardboard Tube Cars
Got any tissue rolls lying around at home? Then you are one step closer to creating these awesome DIY cardboard tube cars!
Create as many as you want and color them in different colors – you’ll have a fun collection of colorful toy cars for your kids. You save money from buying expensive car toys while having fun creating not just the toys but also wonderful memories with your toddler.
To learn the easy ways to achieve this car craft, check it out at Craftulate.
Disney Pixar Cars Popsicle Stick Crafts
If your kids have seen the movie Cars, they will surely have fun creating this car craft idea! Help them make their own Mater, Luigi, and of course, Lightning McQueen.
Using only popsicle sticks, paper, markers, paint, and glue gun, – create the Cars characters and let your kids enjoy role-playing scenes from the movie using their new, hand-crafted car toys!
Check out the complete guide at Natural Beach Living.
Color Mixing with Toy Cars
We all know about finger painting and other unique ways of drawing on a canvas using anything other than standard paint brushes. Well, here’s an idea – toy car painting!
By simply dipping the bottom area of toy cars in different paint colors, your kids can have fun driving them around a blank canvas and creating abstract art. They also get to see and learn how colors change when mixed while having fun creating their unique artwork.
For a more detailed example of this car craft activity, check it out at The Kindergarten Connection.
Egg Carton Cars
Upcycle your egg cartons once you’ve enjoyed all the eggs and turn them into these adorable egg carton cars for your toddler!
All you need to recreate this cute DIY car toy craft are some egg carton cut-outs, spare buttons for wheels, some paint (or any other coloring materials you have at home), some thick paper, and glue. Then, you can make a road using black paper cut-outs. Draw white lines in the middle to make it more realistic. Let your child be creative and help you design the road layout.
Race Car Footprint Canvas
You probably know a lot of footprint art crafts for toddlers, but did you know that you can also create a race car footprint canvas? What a wonderful keepsake for the size of your little one’s foot.
With a bit of imagination and some water-soluble paint, you can reprint your toddler’s foot on a clean canvas, then draw the other details of a car around it. You can let your child get as creative as they want with the colors and overall design, or you can check out this tutorial for a step-by-step guide at Craftulate to copy the design above.
Paper & Clothespin Cars
Create a toy car using extra clothespins hanging around your home. Cover them with colored paper, cut out wheels and windows, and put in your driver. You can let your kids choose what color of paper they want to use in covering the clothespin and creating the car’s body. Just make sure you have enough color paper for when your toddler wants to create a full parking lot of clothespin cars.
See Glued to My Crafts for the complete guide on how to recreate this craft.
Popsicle Stick Car Puppets
Here’s another version of a popsicle car craft, only this time, there are puppet drivers included!
All you need is one big popsicle stick and four regular-sized sticks. You glue them together to create the car’s body, with the bigger popsicle vertical from the other four horizontal smaller ones. Then, have your kids color the sticks. Next, cut out some circles to be used as wheels, and finally, draw your driver’s features on the big stick. Once these are assembled, your little one can finish decorating as they please.
For the full tutorial, check it out on Glued to My Crafts.
Simple Car Craft For Kids Activity
This simple car craft for kids activity combines learning about numbers, colors, and shapes. This is an excellent craft for teaching the letter C. After all, the word car also starts with C, and the paper plate cutout is shaped like a C. Check out our Letter C Crafts for more learning fun.
All you need are some paper plates, coloring materials, old bottle caps, glue, and your child’s imagination as they color the plates and draw imaginary windows and drivers on this car craft.
For more details, check out Learning4Kids.
On the Road Again – Lamp Restyling
Is your old lamp in need of an overhaul? Then ask your toddler for help in creating a unique “on the road again” lamp design!
This is the perfect overhauling style for your old lamps, especially if your child loves cars or traveling. They can permanently showcase their favorite car toys as they are displayed around the “street-styled” lamp.
For the full tutorial, check it out on the bliss bloom blog.
Cardboard Box Car
What better way to let your child enjoy a homemade toy car than to create one where they can sit in!
This craft should be easy if you have any big cardboard boxes at home. All you need to do is cut out the box’s flaps and draw the shape of a car. Make sure to leave the front part uncut, as this will serve as your car’s windscreen. Then use a couple of paper plates for the wheels.
Once you’ve formed the car, you have the option to color it or leave it as it is. Let your child decide and if they want to color it in, then use paint and color in a space where you can easily clean the spills and splashes of paint.
For the step-by-step guide on how to complete this cardboard box car, head over to Craftulate.
Sponge Painting Car Craft
If you’ve been doing crafts with toddlers, you’ve probably encountered the sponge painting technique. It’s a coloring style where you use a sponge, dip it in paint, and dab it onto your canvas.
Look for car-shaped templates online or draw them on your own. Then have your child color them using the sponge painting technique. You not only teach your kids about colors and painting, but you also help them get more familiar with different shapes.
For more details about this car craft, check it out at Buggy and Buddy.
Handmade Cupcake Liner Car Cards
The next time you serve cupcakes for a special occasion, keep the cupcake liners so you can recycle them into these awesome cupcake liner car crafts!
Plus, you can even turn this craft into an invitation for the next special occasion or just whenever your toddler needs to send a special message to family and friends.
To learn the details of achieving this craft, check it out on Glued to My Crafts.
Rubber Band Car
With just a few rubber bands, a sturdy, empty aluminum foil tube, and some old CDs, you can recreate this rubber ban toy car that your toddler would surely love to play with. It’s cool because of its long body, and it turns and runs when pushed, so it replicates a toy car!
You can color the tube and let your child decide how to design it. You can also choose to color the CDs or simply leave them as it is, showing the shiny side out so that it reflects light when it rolls around. Just be sure to play safe because the discs can be sharp.
To learn more about this craft, check it out at Crafts by Amanda.
Homemade Car Book
When it comes to doing arts and crafts, you should never forget to also teach your kids the beauty of scrapbook making. So, if your kids love cars or toy cars and have plenty of toys to show off, you can take plenty of photos of their collection and help them create a homemade car book. You can also find pictures of cars in some old newspapers or magazines that you have around.
They can show these to people when they visit your home or as a great way to document all the toy cars they own.
You can take it a step further by including educational sections in the book – parts of a car, safety signs on the road, car signals, etc.
There is no limit to what you can include in this special book, so make sure to create it with your toddler, so you know what photos and details they want to include.
DIY Wind Car
Have you ever heard of a wind toy car? It’s basically a toy car that your kid can move by blowing the sail.
It is a great toy to keep your toddlers busy and helps them understand educational ideas such as how the wind helps the toy car move while enhancing their fine motor skills. Plus, if the wind outside is strong enough, you can head out and let the call roll on the streets as the natural wind blows it around.
Check out how to create this DIY wind car over at Stir the Wonder.
DIY Cardboard Car Conveyor Belt
Toy cars are meant to be mobile and creating this DIY cardboard car conveyor belt will make it possible!
With just a few recycled items you can easily find at home – cardboards, empty boxes, sticks, and coloring materials – you can create this conveyor belt and then keep your toddler busy as they put their toy cars on it and turn the belts to see their toy cars drive around.
The best part is they can also put other toys on it – toy airplanes, motorcycles, and any other toy with wheels.
For the complete guide to this craft, head over to Hello Wonderful.
Design Your Own Upcycled Race Car
If there is one thing that your toddler associates with toy cars, it is speed and racing!
What better way for them to enjoy these concepts than to create their own racing cars?
With some paper towel rolls, paint, tape, paper fasteners, scissors, and glue, you can spend an afternoon with your toddler creating this craft. Let them use the colors they want, and you can even give them stickers to use as designs for their DIY race cars.
Lego Balloon Cars
LEGOs are so much fun to build with. Your toddler can easily create different sizes and shapes of LEGO cars. But why stop there?
Make it even more fun for your kids to play with their LEGO toy cars by teaching them this LEGO balloon car craft. Plus, it’s a fun way to teach them about some simple science.
All you need are some colorful balloons that you can tie onto the ends of their LEGO cars. After filling it with air, you can ask your toddler to slowly release the balloon and watch their LEGO cars take off!
For more details about this car craft activity, check out Little Bins Little Hands.
Homemade Tissue Box Car
Emptied another box of Kleenex tissues? Don’t throw it out yet! Instead, turn it into a fun box car for your toddler.
With your empty tissue box, attach old CDs on the sides to serve as the wheels, and watch your supposed trash turn into a fun toy for your toddler to enjoy and keep busy with while at home. Just be careful as the discs can be sharp.
For the full guide, head over to Do Play Learn.
Magnet Powered Car
The concept of magnets is almost magical for kids. Attach some magnets to your child’s toy car, and then use the opposite magnet for your child. They can drag their toy cars around their play area.
This is a great way to teach them how magnets work through another fun, entertaining activity that your child will really enjoy!
For more ideas about this activity, check out Science Kiddo.
