Road Trip Idea: Make Your Own Magnet Board

There are many fun commercial magnet boards for travel.  Ones where you can set up furniture in a house, a construction site, farm etc.  Why not make your own before you go on a trip and then you will have it for play while you travel!  

If you have more than one child, you could exchange them with each other and/or save them for future road trips, making a small collection!

Materials

• Pencil
• Eraser
• Markers or pencil crayons
• Thin black pen
• Self adhesive magnet sheet (you can buy these in craft or dollar stores)
• Scissors
• Small cookie sheet
• Storage bag

Directions

• Think of a theme or idea for your magnet board.  Whether is be “Under the Sea”, “Space Travels” etc.  You could even just do shapes.

• Sketch out all your parts, colour them and cut them out.  (We sketched, traced over the pencil lines with a thin, black pen and then erased the pencil once the ink was dry. After colouring with pencil crayons, we added a bit of glitter and watercolour to create a magical sea scene.)

• Mount your cut-out pieces on the sticky part of your magnet sheet and then cut them out again.

• Put them in a bag with your small cookie sheet and take them with you on your next road trip, creating a scene and enjoying imaginary play on your cookie sheet board.

Purpose

• Creating props for play.

Safety Notes

• Exercise caution when using scissors.
• Magnets can be dangerous if swallowed– seek immediate medical attention.  Thus, this activity is not recommended for children 0-3 or those who tend to put objects in their mouths.