DIY Portable Park-Themed Play Mat

One of the challenges I enjoy as a mom is finding fun, playful ways to keep my daughter happily engaged while at restaurants, on flights, or in waiting rooms. While we often bring sketchbooks and pencil crayons or one of our mini play dough kits along, my little one is currently really into imaginative play, so our new portable park-themed play mat is just perfect for her.

To create it, I used:

• a basic cloth placemat
• felt in several different colours
• fabric glue
• sharp scissors
• a pencil

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The thing I love about this project is there really is no right way to go about it. I knew I wanted our park-themed play mat to include a grassy area, a little pond, and a community garden all connected by a walking path, so I started by creating a grey walkway that divided my placemat into three basic spaces. Lucky for me, I had a large piece of grey felt on hand that allowed my path to be all one piece, but you could just as easily use several pieces and overlap them in the gluing stage.

With my path as my guide, I sketched out the pond, grassy knoll and community garden pieces before cutting them out.

When done, my basic arrangement included a black garden up at the top of the landscape with a green grassy knoll on one side and a small blue pond on the other.

To create more of a park feel, I then cut out several small green tree and bush shapes, as well as a few grey stones, and placed them in the various empty spaces around the larger shapes.

With my placement as I wanted it, it was time to glue everything down. In order to keep the arrangement as it was, I flipped over only half of the large felt pieces at a time, adding the glue and then flipping them back down into their original places before gently pressing them down.

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While I happily could have left it at that, I decided to add a few details just for fun—lily pads for the pond, veggies for the garden and flowers for the grassy knoll.

After letting the park-themed play mat dry fully, it was ready to tested out. My little one retrieved a small rabbit and dog to frolic in the park and got to narrating their adventures and conversations as she moved them around the mat. Fun, right?

And the best part? The mat can very easily be rolled up, popped into your bag, and taken with you whenever you anticipate some sort of wait or sitting time that may be challenging for your little one. Also, because it’s made from a placemat, it’ll be the perfect size for a table spot or airplane table tray—win!

Is your little one more of a car/truck person than a park person? If so, pop on over to Mama.Papa.Bubba. to see our roadway version of this project here.