Going, going, gone - Transportation Part 2

Transportation units are fun: there are just so many possibilities in terms of work for the children. I always try to include a lot of choices involving fine motor skills, art, math, language, and all. Here is a sample of the rest of our transportation week...

Spray painting a new coat of paint on a car

Looking for a way to develop your child's fine motor skills? This might just be it. Using a spray bottle is not easy for children but it works the muscles needed for handwriting so give it a go by suggesting your child spray paint a new coat of paint onto a car. In the summertime, I usually draw a HUGE car and send the kids to spray paint outside. In the colder months, a small sheet of paper with a plastic tray does just fine.

Hammering a new train track

In terms of practical life, hammering is a good one. Most people will pick up a hammer at some point in their life so it's useful to know how to hold a nail and how to hit it right. To make it fun, I proposed an egg carton, golf tees and a hammer too in order to build a makeshift train track. It wasn't easy to hold the nail and hammer in the right place but my daughter got through it proudly. 

Drawing an airplane using the oval inset

We've worked a lot with the circle inset and it is going well so I added the oval inset this week. Instead of simply tracing the inside, I suggested we make an airplane out of it. Tracing just to trace has become a bit boring for my 3 year old so adding "a design" makes it more enjoyable.

Various transportation mode puzzles

We have an impressive collection of peg puzzles and floor puzzles here but they seem to be accumulating dust lately. In honor of transportation week, I thus decided to bring some out! Some made sounds, some helped with the ABCs, some were pattern matching ones, and so overall, it provided a good variety.

Blocks on the truck

I saw this cute printable a year ago or so on The Measured Mom (who, by the way, is terrific at creating  free and original printables!) and saved it for later days. You see, my son, who is 6, would find this work way to easy so I waited patiently for my daughter to age so I could print it and offer it on her shelves. Well, here it is! I provided numbers 1-5 and several girly blocks for the truck. She'd pick a number and put that quantity of blocks on the dump truck.

Vehicle snack

Well, this is something we've done before...at least, I did make this for my son's Cars birthday party a few years ago. It was easy to make so this time, I thought the kids could do it themselves...and they did. I had a model car of course and one ready for assembly. Easy peasy!

Red Rod Maze for mini vehicles

So we don't own a full size set of red rods. Hey, we home school so sometimes, I prefer to invest in other things. We made our own set of red rods (a miniature set) and it works just as well, believe me. My daughter has mastered sizing up the rods so to offer an extension, I showed her how to make a maze with the rods. She loved it and built it several times. We added mini Cars vehicles and it made it even better!

Hot air balloon folding and gluing

Although not a major type of transportation, I always feel like the hot air balloon is forgotten! :( I precut 4 shapes resembling a hot air balloon and all that needed to be done was a fold in the middle of each and then each fold had to be glued to another one until it came full circle. I looked for a string but of course, they were all gone so we used a pipe cleaner to suspend it. The original post suggested more than 4 shapes by the way and theirs looks much more colorful for for my youngsters, I felt this would be plenty!

Fully assembled hot air balloon ready for flight!

Language: Get them talking

Unable to find a picture of my daughter in or close to a vehicle, I picked one of her brother sitting on a motorcycle. My goal: to get her talking about the picture by asking open-ended questions that get her thinking. Of course she started with who was in the picture and what he was sitting on but she had to think more about the weather that day or the season for example. She required clues for those (look at the clothing. Any shade anywhere?) Questions such as : "Why is he sitting on this motorcycle?" were easier for her since they were more speculative. I got her cracking when I asked her if it was Adrian's motorcycle! :)

Tire rolling

Fun times. How far can little tires go? Zahavah rolled each one and we discussed which one was furthest/closest. Which one was first and last in the tire race and such. Fun, easy, wordy. 

Materials for race down the ramp

Race down the ramp - Science!

Transportation offers such good simple science activities! This one is of of my favorites. We inclined a plank of wood so a car could roll down. We varied the incline using different props to see if the car would go further or not and as a pièce de résistance, we modified the plank itself by adding components on top to see if some materials would make the car roll faster/slower. Needless to say, it created quite a ruckus in the "classroom". It was fun to see what the kids thought would accelerate/decelerate the car too. As you can see, tape did not help Lightning McQueen win THIS race! :)

Science : Air, Land, Water

First time exploring air, land, water is always a bit "prickly". Water is quite easy to understand and identify, land is well, quite allright too but air? Always a tough concept for the kiddos. Thankfully, with the Montessori approach, it's a lot easier. More "tangible" if you will. Although at first sight, there is "nothing" in the first jar, there actually is and it's all around us: air! I presented the jars and cards and we    talked about about how our lungs fill with air and we can feel our ribcage moving as such. 

Following up on air, land, water

A quick follow up for the previous activity can be done with different types of vehicles: namely planes, boats, cars, etc. Zahavah's job was to sort through the vehicles and match them to the appropriate card. No trouble here! Concept was learned!

Air, land, water cards

Reinforcement for the air, land, water concept is always nice (so is revision of course!) so I printed these cards to match with the air, water, land cards. Once again, Zahavah confirmed that she understood the difference in between all three.

Engineer a ship with straws, foil and a plastic cup

Hmm. These challenges, although fun are hard to my daughter. I offered a bundle of straws, a long sheet of foil and a plastic cup. The goal: Make a boat for the the Lego man using the materials provided. At first, she didn't know where to start. I prompted her with a "do boats float or sink?" She knew they floated so I asked her to look for materials that floated. She started with the foil. It floated but  was it strong enough? The straws floated too but they scattered. Not good. The man would fall through; the foil would get water on. She decided to combine both. She wrapped a bunch of straws with the foil. It worked...for a while. Water started to get in the straws! That's when the cup got handy for the man. To make sure it wouldn't sink though, she re-wrapped her straws so the endings would be covered in foil too. Success!

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Transportation for Preschoolers - Part 2

Transportation Week sure went by fast. If you do decide to opt for one yourself, do take the time to include a chat on road safety. Although I didn't take any pictures of that part, I did revise the rules of street crossing with Adrian and the importance of wearing a seat belt / sitting in a car seat in the car. And now, for the "fun part"...

Parking Lot Game

After seeing this activity on My Montessori Journey, I just had to "bring it home" in my own way. As such, I prepared my "parking lot" with a black construction paper sheet and looked at the transportation related items I had and chose a few with different beginning letters. Here's what I came up with:

"Airplane"

"Car"

"Train"

"Wheel"

"Boat"

"Screw"

"Helicopter"

I placed all the items in a basket for Adrian to sort appropriately in the right parking space according to their first letter sound. He had no trouble whatsover and loved the idea.

Tire Roll & Measuring in Car Unit

Tire rolling? Why not! For gross motor, tire tossing into a bin is great. For fine motor, tire rolling is! It takes quite a bit of dexterity to manipulate a car wheel into rolling.  For this activity, I asked Adrian to roll the car wheel from a marked spot on the floor (masking tape works great). Once it stopped rolling or fell to its side, he had to line up "matchbox/hot wheels" cars from the starting line to the stopped tire and count how many cars were lined up. The number was then recorded on a chalkboard. We did this 10 times to his great delight. I'm not sure which part he liked best actually; he seemed as excited by the rolling as he was by the lining up of the cars. When the 10 times were up, we looked at the chalkboard and discussed a bit about the furthest his wheel went (11 cars' length), the closest it stayed (1 car's length) and so on.

Car Tire Tracks Art

Here's a nice art activity we did on Adrian's birthday that was well liked. In fact, it was so liked I thought we'd repeat it this week. I purposely chose three cars with different types of tires and chose  colors displayed on signals. Adrian rolled the cars in the paint and made tracks. As usual, we used washable tempera paint.

Sink or Float?

Water activities are always a big hit in our home. I haven't brought out a "Sink or float" tub in a while and I thought that with the transportation theme, it would kind of fit nicely, especially if I took the time to select objects that would stay within the thematic. This activity kept Adrian's interest for a long time, even after he classified which floated and which sank. Part of it was due to me asking him if he could try to sink the boat for example. I also asked him if if could make the rubber wheel float and so on.

Close Up of the Sink or Float? Objects

Here is what we used for our Sink or Float? Transportation activity:

A plastic bath toy boat
A wooden train
A crepe airplane
A metal screw with washers, nut, wing
A rubber wheel
A plastic and metal "matchbox" car



Train Ticket Hole Punching

Sadly, this was a bit of a toughie. I thought it might be and was hesitant to put it out but Adrian saw me punching holes and seemed so interested that I thought we'd give it a try. Although it did make an indent he he tried to punch holes, it didn't punch through to his disappointment. If you would like to give this activity a try, I printed these train tickets by visiting The Spaghetti Westerner.

Going Down the Ramp - Velocity Experiment

I've been wanting to do this activity for a while and originally had planned on doing it during our Train/Thomas&Friends week. Unfortunately, I could not find a plank of wood suitable for a makeshift ramp and as such had to let go of the idea. While re-organized the storage room last week-end, I saw this unused bathroom vanity shelf and just knew what to do with it! :) It's not as long as I would have liked but it worked just fine. I elevated it with a Fisher-Price mountain so it'd have a nice angle and provided a "matchbox car". Also provided was a basket of different "fabrics" to test out our car and ramp. How fast and how far does the car go on the wood? How far and fast does it go when bubble wrap covers the ramp? Why is that? What happens if we switch to sandpaper? Well, you get the idea. Adrian sure did and LOVED it. He repeated the activity over and over again.  

Stuck in Tape

The tape material was the one we finished with as help was needed to roll it up and put it on the plank.  Needless to say, Adrian thought it was hilarious when the car got stuck!

Basket of Materials to Cover up the Ramp

The basket includes:

-Bubble Wrap
-Sandpaper
-Silk nightgown
-Fluffy cotton Towel
-Masking Tape

All materials were wide and long enough to cover our ramp (aka small bathroom vanity shelf).

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I'm linking up to Montessori Monday today...

as well as Living Life Intentionally

and, Discover and Explore and No Time for Flashcards!

Transportation Week for Preschoolers - Part 1

Transportation Week. Having already spent an entire week on Trains/Thomas & Friends back in 2012, I decided not to include the engines in this unit except for one activity I'll be presenting later this week. I kind of expected this unit to be more substantial but in the end, I could not come up with any more original ideas (what is wrong with me?) which worked out just fine since we had a short week anyway! :)

Maps + Left and Right

Ouch...Well that did not go too well. I was looking for a way to introduce maps into this transportation unit and figured introducing "left" and "right" would be great too. Turns out that even though those two concepts are great to present to preschoolers, introducing them at the same time is awfully confusing to them. The abstract of being the bus driver turning and such was a bit much for a 4.5 years old so it turned out to be more frustrating for Adrian than educative. That's ok. It made ME learn that my "maps" will have to be simpler and brought on on their own! :)

Airplane controller game

In this air controller game, each airplane is ready to land but to know which airplane gets to land first, the die will have to be rolled. The number rolled corresponds to the airplane that gets to land first, second and third, and so on (each airplane sports a number on its body). I thought it would be great to practice ordinal numbers.

Boomerang Airplane Origami

I actually did not mean to make it a boomerang airplane but to Adrian's delight, after I tested my plane, it came right back to me! :) I guess I lost my touch in basic origami airplane design, huh? Anyhow, prior to us making the planes, I had one set out and two sheets ready to fold. Adrian simply had to follow my folds by looking at where I was folding...which wasn't so simple in the end. It required some help but he was happy with the result. I still think it's too early to do anymore origami. It's not very rewarding for him when I help I think so from now on, I'll lay off the paper folding for a few months and get back to it later.

 
Land, Air, or Water?

This activity could have been done with actual cars, trains, airplanes and such but the variety of vehicles we have here is limited. I must also confess that Adrian loves DK's My First Touch and Feel Picture Cards. We have all 4 sets and so I thought I'd bring out "Things that Go" to do the "Land, Air, or Water" game. He loved it and did extremely well.

Transportation Puzzle

Yet another Melissa & Doug floor puzzle. Although we do not own them all, we certainly might at one point! :) This was the first M&D floor puzzle I bought. At that point, Adrian had never done any "jigsaw" puzzle; only peg puzzles so I wanted something small and this was great. Highly recommended. It fitted in our theme this week so I brought it out to his great delight.

Funneling radiator cooling

For this funneling activity, I purposely chose a cup in which the funnel would touch the bottom and one in which it wouldn't. The trick is that when it doesn't touch the bottom, the "cooling" goes down so much faster and empties itself completely whereas in the other cup, it drains much slower and a residual remains in the funnel. This made it particularly interesting to Adrian who repeated the pouring many, many times at different speeds, from one cup to the other and vice versa.

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If the season allows where you live, here is one activity that my son loved relating to cars which I couldn't bring out again due to weather conditions in our area: the spray body painting of a car as seen below:

I prepared this special activity for Adrian's 4th birthday (under the theme Cars). He loved it and although it was messy it was well worth it. Simply draw a giant version of a car, prepare some water-thinned washable tempera paint and put it in a spray bottle. Tape the drawing to a wall that can be hosed down and let the fun begin!

Going, Going, Gone : Transportation Part 1

I'm not gonna lie: a big part of me associates the transportation theme with little boys! I know, it's shameful. Extremely sexist but once against, my daughter set the clocks right for me at least! :) A lot of our activities were actually "borrowed" from my son's when he did a similar week back in preschool and I received no protests from my girly girl. I also brought it some new ones of course! :)

Matching letters using cars and parking spaces

Vroom, vroom, vroom. Or is it zoom, zoom, zoom? No matter what kind of noise your cars make, this activity is a win-win! Tape each car with a letter and make a "parking lot" with the same letters. The child now has to match car and parking space. I personally chose the letters we've been working on : s, m, a, t, c, r, i, p, h, j, u, l. It helps with letter recognition and is fun at the same time. Original idea? My Montessori Journey. 

Fine motors at work: hole punching train tickets

All aboard! But wait! Has the conductor punched your ticket yet? This activity was so beloved that I had to re-print tickets! I was more than happy to oblige. Hole punching seems very simple but it's actually very hard for little hands. It helps develop the small muscles needed to write so I highly encourage it. Make it harder by providing construction paper or cardstock. Make it easier by replacing with foil or...by using a scrapbooking type of puncher. Tickets needed? I grabbed mine at The Spaghetti Westerner.

Out of coolant? Time to refill!

Oh no! The car is out of coolant! Time to re-fill! Thanks to colored water, a funnel and glass, the job is "easy"...at first. Re-filling the tiny bottle was quite challenging and demanded great care and attention.

Tire tracks can differ: use paint to prove it!

Does every car has the same tires? Do you think they will make the same tracks? Let's find out! With some paint and a few cars, nothing's easier! Zahavah enjoyed making straight lines in yellow, green and red. She noticed how going slow versus fast also produced a different effect on the paper. Matching the tracks with the cars once her piece of art was finished was also fun.

Indoor car wash for "Matchbox cars"

Well now that the cars were dirty with paint, we had better give them a wash down, right? And we did!  During the summer, we did a car wash but now that it's much cooler, it had to be an indoor one. I provided shaving cream for the soap, a cube sponge (extra work for fine motors), a small pitcher of clean water for rinse-off, a cloth for drying and some sponges for polishing. The tray was a hit. Zahavah washed all the cars...several times. 

How many Puffs of Smoke?

Puffing along! Steam trains puff smoke so using cotton balls and trains from my son's collection, I asked my daughter to put a certain amount of puffs of smoke over each train. She is not at the stage when she recognizes written numbers above 5 so we did it orally since she can go well above 10 in that department! :)

Do a Dot Fun

Do a Dot sheets are all the rage here so I couldn't resist printing a few from the Gift of Curiosity's transportation pack. Each was unique, some even had counting or associations so it was fun AND educational!

Day versus Night: let's sort it out!

During the week, we also did "regular stuff". We practiced our sandpaper letters tracing and sounds and we added a new element of history to our activity time: day and night distinction. Now my daughter has known about day and night for quite a while but it was great to see her sort the day and night cards so fast. She felt so proud of herself for doing this work perfectly the first time! :)

Transportation play dough mats

Yes, play dough is still very much popular in our house; usually, a lot more when it's home made dough and creative challenges. Play dough mats, as I found out, are not all that! :( In case your preschooler wants to give these a try (I thought the ideas were most clever!), head over the Sparklebox for your freebies.

Making a car

Family Fun Crafts had the cutest craft made out of a toilet paper roll, paints and brads. Had to give it a try with my 3 year old. I prepared the car pieces of course. Her job was to paint, assemble the wheels and glue the stickers on. It was ok. Better for older kids. When the adult prepares most of the craft, it's not fun...

Trying out the car on a long cardboard ramp!

Engineering a bridge

Providing only two wooden blocks and straw, I asked my preschooler if she could build a bridge that would support 4lbs of sugar. She examined the straws, weighed the sugar and seemed to think I was challenging her to something impossible. At first, she put the straws down and it didn't look like a bridge at all so I had to remind her that boats should be able to go under AND cars over. Then she started putting several straws on and the sugar went on and held. She was awfully proud. I asked her why she didn't put only one straw and she told me the sugar would be too heavy for it. I also asked her why she put all the straws closely and not far apart and she told me the sugar would fall through. We tried those options and of course, she was right in both cases. The Imagination Tree did a similar activity which greatly inspired this one. Their straws were smaller than ours and the flexi kind so it took more straws and tape was also involved I believe.

Ordinal numbers and a boat race

Although our "pond" was very small, my daughter still had a lot of fun blowing on all three boats to see which would come first, second and third. Older children could easily graph the activity too and see which boat is the fastest.

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2014 - 2015 Preschool Themes

School year 2013-2014 has yet to come to an end that I've already started planning for school year 2014-2015. I simply couldn't help myself: I love planning and the ideas were flowing. For example, I've already come up with a brand new batch of themes to explore for my 3 year old preschooler. I've also created various assessment forms (aka progress report) for my use every week to evaluate how my little one is progressing within the Montessori program (though we truly are not exclusively following this educational approach I must say) and I am now working on a new daily schedule, lunch menus and so forth.

 

For now, what I'd like to share with you is the new list of units I've assembled for the upcoming school year. You'll find some "classic/traditional" thematics  (bugs, weather, transportation) but also a few more personalized  ones.  The beauty of picking out themes for one child is that you can truly base these on that child's interest. I'm not saying that I exclusively chose topics that my daughter will adore but I consciously included a lot of themes that I know she'll be motivated to explore.  Of course, a few of our units are not going to be exactly Montessori-friendly this year but as I said, I'm not a hardcore Montessorian so I allowed myself this "parenthesis" for a few units (fairies, princesses).

2014-2015 Preschool Themes

AUGUST

(School is due to start on August 25 2014)

Down by the Seashore

SEPTEMBER

Woodland Fairies

On The Go (Transportation)

Fashion Week

Autumn Fun

Kitty Cats & Their Wilder Counterparts

OCTOBER
Firefighters are Community Helpers
In the Kitchen
Cuddly Teddy (Teddy Bears)
Halloween

NOVEMBER
Build it Up (Blocks)
Life's a Zoo
The Princess in Me
Thanksgiving

DECEMBER
(Winter Break shall start December 19, 2014)
Up in the Sky (Solar System)
It's a Birthday Party
Christmas

JANUARY
Winter Wonderland
In the Wintry Woods
Lollies, Gummies and Other Candies
Pups & Dogs

FEBRUARY
Chinese New Year: Baa to You!
Valentine's Day
Mardi Gras / Carnaval
Inventions & Imagination

MARCH
Construction Zone
Training Camp (Sports)
St. Patrick's Day
It's Raining, it's Pouring (Weather)
Easter

APRIL

(Spring Break shall be held the week of April 6, 2015)
Spring's In
Earth Day
On the Farm

MAY
By the Pond
At the Fair
Don't "Bug" Me (Bugs)
Amazing Plants

JUNE

(School is out on June 12, 2015)
Teatime and Sweets are my Favorites
Deep in the Ocean

Needless to say, needs and interests are subject to change and so are these weekly themes. Family visits and health crises also tend to squeeze in and may cancel/shorten up some days/weeks but overall, this is what should be found on our shelves this upcoming school year...What's going to be on yours?

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2013-2014 Kindergarten Themes for Adrian

Drum roll please: I have finally finished to "dot the i's and cross the t's" on my Kindergarten themes for 2013-2014! Honestly, this list was somewhat ready well before Zahavah's was, but I somehow was hesitant to go from draft to final version. As some of you may know, Adrian, now 5,  will be entering Kindergarten this fall and will be attending school full-time as a result. It wasn't exactly a choice; technically, Germany doesn't allow children to be home schooled so Adrian must go to school "full-time" this year and if we wish to "home school" him, so be it...but only after school is over. :) Adrian of course loves to learn and loves "school with mama". I do have my doubts as to how much he'll really be able to do after a full day in German Kindergarten; thus the hesitation at putting together themes and a new home school binder together for that matter. In the end, I am still going forward with themes this year because Adrian loved the concept last year but I won't prepare nearly as many activities as I did in the past. I also decided to keep home schooling in place for Adrian because Adrian is still behind in some areas of learning and well...I'd like for him to read English too! ;)

Adrian and I at a garden this summer; lots of botany!

2013-2014 Kindergarten Mini-Unit Themes

September

It's All About Me !

Home of the Oldest Countries : Europe

On the Farm

October

The Colorful Season : Fall
Little Monsters & Robots
Build it Up : Legos, Playmobil and MegaBloks
Halloween

November

The New World: North America

Inventions & Gadgets

Training Camp (Sports)

Thanksgiving

December

The Angry Birds Strike Back

The "Frozen" Continent : Antarctica

Christmas

January

To the Milky Way and Beyond

On the Go (transportation)

Home of the World's Largest Tropical Rainforest : South America

I Rock (rocks)

February

Celebrating Dr. Seuss (children's book author)

Valentine's Day
Mini Winter Olympics

At the Zoo

March

My Healthy Body (nutrition, human body)

St. Patrick's Day

By the Pond

The Terrible Lizards (Dinosaurs)

April

Construction Zone

The Largest Continent: Asia

In the Garden

Easter

May

Up in the Sky (weather)

The Sweet Life (sweets & candies)

The Smallest Continent : Australia

Don't Bug Me ! (insects)

June

Ocean Life

Circus Time

The Cradle of Humankind : Africa

The continent study is spread throughout the school year as you can see but it may be blended in the month itself instead of being completely separated from the other themes covered during that month. I'll see how best to cover it. One thing is sure, Adrian's developed a passion for geography lately so he'll be very happy to see it on the "menu" this year! :)

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Tender Moments with Toddlers & Preschoolers, Preschool Corner &5K, Look What We Did, Money Saving Monday, Monday Kid Corner, and We Made That.

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!