As with many 6-year-olds, our son is crazy about Legos! So, we decided to have a Lego-themed birthday party, which included a birthday cake that looks like Lego bricks and L-E-G-O-S bingo (instead of B-I-N-G-O), among other activities. One of our activities was to build Lego car racers and race them down a ramp. The ramp was easy to make and it was a huge hit!

Step 1: Gather Materials

Here's what you'll need:

40" x 60" x 1/2" foam board (from your local art supply or office supply store)
Decorative tape with an arrow pattern, like Japanese Washi Tape, 15mm by at least 120", for the lane markers
Glue stick
Color printer and 7 pages of 8.5 x 11" printer paper
Paper slicer or scissors
(Optional) Raised finish line
- Baker's Twine
- Masking tape or scotch tape
- Two 2x2 lego bricks, to raise twine off the board

Step 2: Make Lane Separators

Place the foam board on a flat surface and measure 13 1/3" from the left of the foam board towards the center of the 40" side. Mark lightly with a pencil. Repeat down the 60" side every 10" or so. This will serve as a guide for where to place the Washi tape.

Repeat but this time measure 13 1/3" from the right side.

Starting at the top, unroll the Washi tape, and affix with the arrows pointing down, following the pencil markings as guides.

When you're done, you should have two lane markers, dividing the foam board into three equal lanes.

Step 3: Print and Glue the Three LEGO Lane Identifiers

Open the attached three lane marker PDFs and print.

Cut out the Lego lane marker squares using your paper slicer or scissors.

Use a glue stick on the back of the paper and affix each of the lane markers at the top of their respective lane.

If you want to modify the design, I've attached the original .svg source of one of the lane markers.

Step 4: Print and Glue the Finish Line

Print the attached finish line PDF. It will use 4 sheets of paper.

Cut out the finish line pieces.

Use the glue stick on the back of each piece and carefully affix flush with the bottom of the foam board and adjacent with the other pieces to make one contiguous finish line.

Note that the current design falls short of the 40" slightly so you need to measure in about 5/16" to center it. Note also there is a slight defect in the checkerboard design on the edges of the PDF. This is due to a bug in the program I used to split the SVG into multi-page PDFs. The kids won't notice. :)

If you want to modify the design, I've attached the original .svg as well.

Step 5: (Optional) Make a Raised Finish Line

If you'd like, use the baker's twine to make a finish line ribbon of sorts. Cut a 45" piece of baker's twine and lay flat on the top of the finish line.

Wrap the sides of the twine around the back and tape on the back with masking tape or scotch tape.

Insert the 2x2 lego bricks to provide some tension and height to the twine, per the picture.

Step 6: Your Ramp Is Complete!

When complete, your ramp should look like this.

Place the ramp at the desired angle to adjust the acceleration of the cars as they roll down the ramp.

At the party, we gave each kid four tires and rims (Ø21 X 12), 2 bearing elements, one seat, one steering wheel, a "power crystal" (2x2 round transparent blue brick) for fuel, and they could choose a minifig for their pilot. They could also use any other pieces they wanted to. The kids got all excited and before long it became a contest of who had the most power crystals in their car :) But you can make up your own game, too! Keep it free-form and fun.

If you make this, post your pictures!

Introduction: Lego Car Race Ramp