Car related activities

One of my sons LOVES toy cars.  These are a few examples of what I find around my house everyday (who needs toy garages, my couch functions not only as a place to sit, but a parking lot):

It was an easy decision last spring to make one of our monthly topics of study cars.  In fact, that month is this month. Unfortunately, with how sick I've been, I ended up enrolling him in the montessori preschool that both his brothers went to.  He is only there half a day, so he still participates in the few activities I've been able to muster up the strength to do with them.  Luckily, Nathaniel isn't that bothered that I haven't delved into the topic as much as I had planned to.  Here are a few things that we've done related to cars.

We bought model cars this summer for the kids to work on with their dad:

We built a car wash out of a cardboard box.  This is something I've had on my mind for a while.  For Owen's birthday, he picked out a plastic matchbox carwash.  The thing has never been properly put together and the pieces are always falling off.  This one we made from all recycled materials, so if it falls apart, I could care less about throwing it away.  This was a project I had Nathaniel work on with his dad on his day off on Monday.  The middle two "twisting brushes" are vitamin jars hot glue gunned onto the bottom of the box (I realized that because they are child-proof, they always twist).  Then, we hot glued some furry sponges around them.  The water is a cut up gift bag from one of the kids' birthday parties, hot glued to the side.

In action:

Next, we made some cupcakes in the shapes of cars.

My brother gave me this pan to thank me for letting him stay here last week:

Admittedly, I thought it was awesome, so did Owen, but I NEVER thought I'd get them to come out.  Look at this:

I had some energy today, not enough for a cake from scratch, but we did have a box of funfetti cake and Hazel has been begging me to make cake.  So, with the help of Nathaniel, we made the batter and baked the cakes.  Of course, I was worried about what to decorate them with so that you could still tell they were cars, and I did not have the energy or patience to do different colors of icing and carefully put it on in the right places.  I just made a vanilla glaze, set up two bowls, like below, and poured icing on top.

The results (they sort of looked like they'd been through a snow storm:

Owen wanted no one to eat them and me to refrigerate them until June for his bday party.  I convinced him I could make more and they finally got to enjoy them, he still wanted to me to turn out the lights and sing Happy Birthday to him.  His favorite thing to do since we got the pan is ask everyone which car they want for his party.

Here they are with tonight's selections: