Most children don’t need encouragement to play with vehicles. We tend to view them as boys’ toys, although give them the opportunity and you’ll find girls like cars and trains too!

Vehicle-play has plenty more to offer beyond the obvious making of engine noises, crashes and races - all of which are great for exploring concepts of danger and destruction in the safety of the front room.

Manipulating the trajectory of a vehicle, be it a train on a wooden track, a car on the kitchen floor or an aeroplane gliding through the sky, is an excellent gross- and fine- motor work out for your children. Pincer and tripod grips are required, along with hand-eye co-ordination, to keep cars on track to their destination.

Vehicle play also helps introduce a bunch of important concepts: go and stop; fast and slow; up and down; left and right. Now that for so many of us, a drive in the car or a trip on the bus is a daily occurrence, it helps children consolidate what they learn in the real world. While there are a huge amount of vehicles with flashing lights and sounds, you’ll find the more simple, pared-back the design, the more the child has to imagine for themselves and the more creative they can be with their small world settings.