Summer activity with kids: Scooter Town

This post is sponsored by Razor Scooters, but all opinions and ideas are our own. We couldn’t wait to post our favorite summer activity with kids: Scooter Town. A new scooter just gave us the perfect opportunity to share.

When I was young, we used to play Scooter Town in our little neighborhood multiple times a week. Basically, game goes like this: the scooters are the cars in the town, and they must obey the laws of the road. Like a real car, the scooters need to fill up with gas at the service station {aka the air pump}, go through bank drive-thrus, navigate around traffic cones, and they must stay on their side of the dotted lines that we draw on our sidewalk. Easy enough, right?

But, the game isn’t about rules and fixing things that aren’t broken. The game is how elaborate of a town you can make using just a few things, and the goal is hours of play that gets kids of all ages involved. In my experience, it will keep ages from preschool on up through middle school entertained for hours, but even better than that is that they will also be bonding together.

Setting up your own Scooter Town

Like most good kids’ games that entertain them for hours, you only need a few small things to make Scooter Town a roaring success.

1. Childlike imagination. Really, the main thing you need for Scooter Town is a good imagination. Sure, the scooters don’t look like cars, the rules of the road don’t *need* to be followed, and there’s no actual food or services being exchanged in Scooter Town. All of that must be imagined, and you will quickly see which kids have that skill and which do not.
2. Scooters. For obvious reasons, you cannot play Scooter Town without scooters. I was worried our Scooter Town days we over for us now that my kiddo are outgrowing their beloved original Razor scooters we’ve had for years. Thankfully, Razor heard our woes and sent us an amazing set of scooters {the A5 Lux and the A5 DLX} that are perfect for my two oldest kiddos. It was just like Christmas when they arrived, and that’s just for me and my husband. The kiddos were even more excited than that, because this means Scooter Town is on indefinitely after this.
3. Sidewalk chalk. The roads and some of the buildings are almost completely designated in chalk, so this is a must-have for us. To start our game, we hire our amazing Scooter Town construction team to draw up a chalk line down the paved pathways in our neighborhood. Then, if we want to get fancy, we can add in a scooter parking lot, draw up turn lanes and roundabouts, and even have chalk drawn houses to return to after a long day in Scooter Town.

That’s it. There’s no fancy stuff required, no signage or chef’s hat necessary, and it certainly doesn’t have to take you all day to set it up. But, I can tell you from experience that if you add an accessory or two, the game will last longer and be even more fun. We like to bring a few signs we use over and over again as well as hats because they are easy to bring to the park with us.

Ideas for creating your own Scooter Town

One of the first things we usually create in our town is the mechanic and gas station. The kids have a blast pretending to fill up or tune up their scooters when we play, and this gives them a place to rest while their scooter is being serviced.

The next thing we usually create is a few drive thrus. Even if your family doesn’t do fast food, get creative and make a bank, a pharmacy, or some other drive thru so you can zip through on your scooter quickly and then stay moving.

We like to create one or two longer stops, like a bakery or a hospital in our Scooter Town. This gives the kids a place to sit and relax a bit before scooting off, and it’s a great opportunity to have them stay hydrated at those stops.

After you have the town basics, you need to designate people to run the stores, service stations, drive-thrus and medical areas. Instead of having kids simply sit at stations and get bored easily, we do our entire town like it’s “on call”. That means the service station attendant can be found zipping around, going through drive-thrus, and otherwise enjoying town until someone pulls up to the station and needs help.

Get creative with your props. We like to repurpose items we find in our backyard, donation bins, and garages that look like fun additions to Scooter Town. There’s no wrong way to outfit a town.

Add rules for safety. We’ve always played with very specific rules of the road {following actual car and motorcycle rules}. This means we use hand signals in place of blinkers, insist upon helmets for riders, utilize turn lanes so we don’t cause accidents, and require all “drivers” to comply with Scooter Town rules for safety reasons.

This year, we even added a police officer. He basically sat right beside the roundabout and issued citations to drivers most of the day. This is why he’s not wearing a helmet since he wasn’t actually driving his scooter, just standing by it. Let me tell you, it was apparently a tricky roundabout because I saw a whole lot of citations issued.

Ready to play Scooter Town with your kids?

You really won’t regret it. The rules and concept are pretty simple, set up can be as easy as grabbing your scooters and some chalk, and kids of all ages adore it. So, order up a few Razor scooters and create some screen-free and amazing memories your kids will never forget.

It should be said that the kids will play longer if you play with them. Help them imagine their scooters as cars, help them see a drive-thru instead of some playground bars, and encourage them to add to the game as the years go on. This may be a summer activity for kids, but Scooter Town isn’t limited to just kids.

How would you like to win a Razor scooter of your very own to get started on your summer activity for kids: Scooter Town?

Razor has offered to give one of our readers an opportunity to win a brand new scooter just by entering below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway