Home made toy carwash

It was another day with four kids aged four and under and I had nothing planned. The two older kids started off drawing pictures of cars and trucks and then asked me to draw a carwash for them. It seems carwashes either terrify small children or excite them to the point of near barfing. These kids are in the latter group. To them a carwash is like the preschooler equivalent of Great America's bestest rollercoaster and you don't have to be over 40 inches tall to ride.

Anyway, after talking excitedly about car washes for a while they decided that it would be best if we actually made one, so I grabbed a load of stuff out of the recycling bin and pulled out a pack of those foam sheets that my friend had got for us, that were on sale because they were christmas colours.

The older kids did most of the work/help by cutting out all the foam and cutting fringes onto it to make the rollers. They also coloured in all the signage and the wheel guides for the floor of the carwash.
I hastily cut holes in a diaper box and glue gunned all the bits on. The top roller is a wooden spoon wrapped in tin foil and shoved into a paper towel tube. The cut up foam sheets were glued on top. Then there were a couple of dangly washing strip thingies made out of more foam sheets and some old packing material. There wasn't enough room to make side rollers that actually turned like the top one, so I just glued on half a cardboard tube with more of the foam frondy things the kids cut out. The kids specifically asked for a sign that said "thank you" as you were leaving, and windows so you could see the car going through (a local car wash has windows like this - seriously cheap fun, as cheap as visiting the "pauper's zoo" in fact (Petco))

Luckliy the barbie cars we have both fitted through it. Later in the day they took to sending barbie through sat in her convertable, poor lass. They even sent Polly pocket through on a scooter. We fixed up a toll booth and they played quite happily with the monstrosity for quite some time, although now they want to make an entire village out of diaper boxes. Apparently they feel that the next building we need is a Post Office. Who knew that Post Offices were next on the "exciting" list after car washes?!?