Transportation: Land

My boys absolutely LOVE trains. So of course I assigned myself Land Transportation. I gave the other moms air and water transportation. I would have loved to do those too, but one must share. :)

We started with a scissor practice skill worksheet. I made it on my outdated print shop program. I just had different vehicles one side, and a destination on the other. They had to cut on the lines connecting them, zig zags, wavy, etc.

 My cute Mr. W. decided to connect them all in one line back and forth. He ended up with one very long piece of paper.

We had some cute snacks. One day we made these cute buses. I covered the graham cracker in frosting for them, and let the kids add oreo wheels, golden graham cereal windows, skittles or M&M lights, and a teddy graham driver or passenger. Some of the kids wanted to make a car instead. They all turned out darling. 

Idea found here

The second day I made snack trains. I stapled paper cups together. On the front train I glued a photo of a steam engine that I found online. Then I let each child choose what they wanted to fill their "tenders" with. Some of the choices were teddy grahams, goldfish crackers, grapes, raisins, marshmallows, oyster crackers, crispy chow mein noodles, etc.

I found this adorable idea at Preschool Express. Jean Warren has lots of fabulous ideas there. 

We played a fun car graphing game also. I made a worksheet with a table on it. I put various car colors on each row, and we watched out the windows for the colors of cars they saw. Then we colored in a square each time we saw a car drive by. I live on a busier street, so even in the middle of the day we were able to see a handful of cars drive by. My boys liked this a lot, and worked on it through out the next few days. 

For story time we read   The Little Engine That Could, among others. I love the old classic by Watty Piper. Some of them have newer illustrations, but much of the same words, but I really love the old one, as do my kids.

After for an art project we made shape trains. I had the shapes precut, rectangles, triangles, squares, and a circle. I also precut a cloud/thinking shape. I had a demo already made to show the kids how to make their shapes into a train. They then added wheels, we did this by dipping an empty thread spool into paint. We talked all about how the Little Engine was brave and thought that he could do hard things. We talked about hard things that they have already learned to do. And then, we talked about things that are hard for them now, but that they thought they could do, and that is what we wrote on our cloud/thought shapes.

I found the idea of the shape train at Preschool Education, and added the think bubble myself.

"I think I can go downstairs by myself"

"I think I can pick apples"

"I think I can clean up by myself"

"I think I can change my clothes by myself"

I loved this little art project. The trains turned out very cute, and I loved seeing their little brains at work, and what they thought they could do and overcome. 

Of course we also had to play a classic train game. We lined up the little chairs that I have and I gave them tickets in every color of the rainbow. (or rather in the construction paper that I have). I found the idea at The Activity Idea Place. To ride the train, I would say, "All aboard the red train" and they would have to find and show their red ticket. We repeated with all the colors they had. They loved this, and we decided to skip a few other planned activities and continue playing this. 

and we absolutely had to play Red Light, Green Light!

Some of the fun songs we sang were:

Down By The Station

Down by the station

Early in the morning,

See the little pufferbillies

All in a row.

See the station master

Pull a little handle.

Chug, chug, Toot, toot.

Off we go!

 

Little Red Caboose

Little red caboose, Little red caboose,

Little red caboose behind the train, train,

Smokestack on his back, Going down the track,

Little red caboose behind the train, train.

                                                          This is a Choo Choo Train                                                             This is a choo choo train (Child becomes a train by squatting)

Puffing down the track (Child does actions that the rhyme states)

Now its going forward, (Child goes forward)

Now its going back. (Child goes back, etc.)

Now the bell is ringing (child pulls make believe bell rope)

What a lot of noise it makes (cover ears and make train noises)

Everywhere it goes. (Children move around the room at random.)