Transportation

Dramatic Play
We blasted off to space in our rocket ship and rocket packs. They had so much fun and played so well together, I kept it out both weeks, although I had only planned on using it the first week.
 
Week 2 I added other cardboard vehicles. I transformed diaper boxes into cars and planes. I learned that spray paint does not cover them, but at least turns the baby heads different colors :) I simplyt attached elastic straps for their cars and some wheels. My daughter did point out that Daniel Tiger's cardboard cars looked better. I guess I was just leaving more room for imagination (which ended up being good, instead of lazy, because some kids pretended the cars were trains).

Blocks
Dramatic Play carried over here, but the first week it was smaller, so I had out a variety of large cars, trucks, trains, and boats.


I also added this shape game week 2.
 
Art
We played with lots of cars!
We drove cars on playdough.
 
We drove cars through paint.
 
We drove cars through shaving cream.
And took one break from the cars to make rocket packs too. One of the kids mentioned making one with his mom and adding stickers. So I checked my "beautiful junk" stash and had enough for a rocket pack for each kids. I added some felt flames and a little coat of spray paint, then they got to dress them up with space stickers.
 

Small Manips
I had a cool felt play area, perfect for this unit, dropped off on my porch from a neighbor this week! It fit perfectly on our new round table too. The kids loved it.
 
We played with transportation lacing cards (thanks Dollar Tree).
 
We played with transportation file folder games (thanks to cards from Dollar Tree).
 
 
 
Week 2, I had a different car rug out with the big chunky cars, planes, trains, and boats.
 
We also played with a Thomas matching game.
We re-enacted The Little Engine That Could with the flannel board story.
 
We had a book on cd, called Big Heli and Little Heli.

Writing
Transportation and construction stickers.
 
Transportation stamps
 

Outside
We had some inside days with temps below 10 degrees, and the days we did go out were snow days!

Snack
Our 2 transportation-related snacks were:
Banana Airplanes
Each child got half a banana, pretzel sticks for wings, and mini colored marshmallows for windows and they each creatively created their own airplane.
 
 
We watched part of a Mighty Machines movie about Airplanes as they ate.

Apple Boats
Each child got half an apple and pretzel sticks to make a sail and put it together themselves.

Large Group
Day 1, we learned and read about Boats, then played Will It Float? with many classroom objects. It was fun making predictions, then charting our results.
 
Day 2, we read about different types of transportation, then wrote in our journals about different types we've used and like.
Day 3, we read The Little Engine that Could, then retold the story with our flannel board.
Day 4, we read about construction vehicles, and made patterns with vehicle cards.

Small Group
Week 1: Transportation Math
Our mom volunteers helped the kids practice counting with dump trucks by counting blocks into them. I found it here on pinterest. We had the printable dump truck, but they liked using a real truck.
I helped them practice patterns with these cards that are also a free printable. I was very impressed that EVERY child can correctly extend a pattern. I tried to have the older group create their own patterns and we weren't as successful, but they tried and I'm proud of where they are, cuz they're right where they should be. We'll keep practicing!
Week 2: Transportation Literacy
Our mom volunteers helped the kids play this letter parking game. I wrote the alphabet in "parking stalls" on box lids, and the kids drove cars into the stalls that matched the letters the moms had on flash cards.
I practiced letters and sounds with them at our "alphabet center." We've used it to practice our small and capital letters, but today we used pictures to sort by beginning sounds. To tie it into transportation, they "flew" a big airplane to the chart with their picture, and had to land it in the right letter.