On Land Transportation: Cars, Trucks & More

How can you get around on land? With Mother Goose Time‘s On the Go preschool transportation theme, we learned it depends on where you’re going, where you live and what you have! Perhaps you’ll go car, truck, bus, foot or animal.

On Land Transportation: Cars, Trucks & More

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Cars

Probably the most popular mode of transportation in our area, the car. We opened circle time with Drive the Car song.

Drive, drive, drive the car,
Drive, drive, drive the car,
Drive, drive, drive the car,
To the supermarket.

I asked “Where do you go in the car?” “To the restaurant, store, Grandma’s, the zoo, etc.” This simple activity during circle time develops language and listening skills.

We talked about clean air and what it smells like. Do you like it when the air smells dirty? Have you ever been behind a stinky car or truck? We took a look and felt dry corn. I explained that corn is used to create ethanol, a fuel that reduces the amount of air pollution given off by cars. When making our car crafts, we could have glued the corn onto the car for “clean fuel car art” but I chose not to this time. It was a good conversation though!

We played Parking Cars”. My group loves to play with dice. It’s great to see some of them recongizing the number on the die and matching it up with the parking spots.

Each month a new themed music CD is included. The songs are wonderful! They really incorporate so much of our theme. I put ours in the CD player that’s available to the kids and they turn it on and off so we hear the songs a lot throughout the month. The favorites so far is Boogie Woogie and Stop and Go.

I think the “Clunker Car” song is awesome!

My car is old, it’s ugly I’m told, a root a toot toot, a biddley boot.
My car is slow, it can hardly go A root a toot toot, a biddely boot
The tire is flat, but really What is wrong with that?
It doesn’t matter what others say I know the truth anyway
Older new, I’m thankful for you Just as you are, you’re my clunker car.The racecar matching game matches upper and lowercase letters. More literacy!

Trucks

What do trucks carry? We used our hands on letters along with a truck to sing the the song below and review our letters.

What will fit in the truck? These paper trucks are adorable. Not so easy for the kids to do on their own, but in this case its not really about the art or craft but playing and measuring what will fit. Lots of play with these little trucks!

Outside we learned about what happens when you drive down a hill. The car goes faster! We used a couple different kinds of ramps and lots of cars and trucks to play with ramps. Lessons in physical science and scientific reasoning through play!

Who delivers packages to your house? Our letters this month are C, T & W. This Delivery Truck Game with Phonic Photos was an excellent way to practice letter recognition. Each house is a pocket so the “boxes” can be delivered to the house.

ABC Patterns

We’re focusing on ABC patterns this month so we used vehicles to create the same pattern we see on the calendar numbers. Airplane, bus, car, airplane, bus car. I gave each child a set and they put them in order. Then we made a big repeating pattern with all of them together.

Bike

What kind of vehicle can you “drive”? A bike! Where do you ride on your bike? We talked about helmet safety and learned how to say “car” in Spanish. We sang “Ride Your Bike while laying down and pedaling our feet in the air.

What are the parts of a bike. Using the daily topic poster and vocabulary builder cards, we talked about the parts of the bike and talked about our favorite ways to travel.

Looking at the map, we located China and talked about it being the bicycle capital of the world. There’s so many people and not much space so not everyone has or uses a car. Bikes are more popular.

Our word family is -ar this month. Some in my group are ready for this. We’re talking about rhyming words all day! So we didn’t spend a lot of time on this activity but some.

On Foot

Where do you walk? Focus on letter Ww – w is for …wagon! We skipped, galloped, hopped, walked, ran, and tiptoed.

Playing the Stop & Go Game

The tie the Shoe art project for this day was more than just art – it includes lacing and tying practice, depending on where the child is in development. I like that each child can really do what they want with their shoe. None are tying yet but some are interested so I showed them how to tie. Then they laced and knotted as they wanted. Some made designs, some colored a little. One 4 year old traced her foot, cut out the shape, colored it and glued it to the back of her shoe.

By Animal

I think this was our favorite day! What types of animals can people ride? Someone said a “coyote” but that just wouldn’t work! The fun ideas that come from little ones! Sometimes people ride elephants. In some countries, elephants are used to carry people and supplies through thick forests where vehicles cannot drive. So we read the book Elmer.

Then we made Elmer the elephant masks.

The best part was the party blowers for the trunk! What a hit! Instead of a tie-on mask, I prefer to use large craft sticks for handles. What an excellent lesson on animals that you can ride, emotions, shapes and colors.