Toot toot!! If your child is crazy about playing with transport toys you’re definitely not alone. Toy cars, trucks, planes and trains hold a fascination for many children that can last right into adulthood.

We all know that any play has immense benefits for children, but it can be interesting to look at a simple activity such as playing with toy cars and view it through the lens of childhood development. As you do, you’ll clearly see why toy cars deserve their place in the toybox.

The dated stereotype of toy car play being a male activity persists even today, but such stereotypes are unhelpful and don’t accommodate individual interests. Many girls are transport lovers, while many boys are not. Your unique child will be drawn to any toy genre that suits their interests, but if that includes toys with wheels you’ll find a wide array of choices in sizes and materials to suit every little hand: train sets, cars, vans, racing cars, trucks, diggers, doll cars and forklifts. The choices are endless.

Play is a vital part of a child’s development and the most enriching play is organic and spontaneous – that means as parents we need to create opportunities for play without getting too caught up in planning or directing it. Do play alongside your child but let them take the lead. It’s nice to support play by offering things that may make it more appealing - for a car-obsessed child that could be offering pieces of chalk to draw roads on a driveway, a panel of wood or cardboard that might become a ramp or roadway, or a piece of pipe that transforms into a tunnel. Toy cars are fun in the sandpit, the garden, or even in the bath. Offering blocks or boxes along with toy cars enables the child to explore the extra dimension of construction.

Here are just a few of the developmental areas that children expand as they play with cars:

Physical benefits

• They build hand-eye coordination skills

• They practice hand dexterity and motor skills

• They move! As children wheel their toys around the room they are on the go. Toy cars can even give crawlers a fun reason to become more mobile.

• Playing with cars helps kids learn to move things around. They learn what happens when they apply more or less pressure, and experiment with how quickly or slowly the toys roll under their control.

Learning concepts

• Children come across vehicles frequently in their daily lives and like to weave real life into their play. In doing so they exercise their creativity and even try to make sense of the world around them.

• They explore cause and effect relationships (e.g. when a car rolls down a ramp), and look in a practical way at concepts such as:  

  • go/stop

  • fast/slow

  • on/off

  • up/down

  • smooth/bumpy

Expanding vocabulary

The names of car parts are words for life. By playing with cars your child learns the names of things such as…

• wheels, tyres, axles

• roof, doors

• engine, bonnet, boot

• steering wheel, seat belt

So buckle in, turn the key, and drive off into the magic world of play, knowing that there’s always a whole lot of learning going on too. Enjoy!