This month’s theme is Transportation: Air, Land & Water. Always a favorite theme, especially with the boys! After a fun week with Water Transportation, we moved onto Land Transport and learned about trucks, buses, tractors, bicycle, cars, vans and so much more. Enjoy!
Land Transportation Themed Activities
Creative Space
Play dough, stamps, scissors, lacing beads and cards, puzzles and blocks are set out for the children to choose from, and get creative during this 30 minute period.
Land Transportation Themed Circle Time
Every day during Circle Time we do the morning routine, which includes the Calendar and ‘Number, Color, Shape and Letter of the week’. We then read a story, sing a few songs and do a group activity.
On every Monday we change the ‘Classroom Helpers’ Classroom Jobs. Each child has a name card on a popsicle stick, and they get to choose their job of the week.
Land Transportation Themed Circle Time Activities
Activity 1: Weekend News
Every Monday morning each child gets a chance to talk about their weekend and what they did. The children then draw a picture in the ‘weekend news’ journal, and the teacher writes down what they have said.
Activity 2: Blippi Transportation song
The children in my class all love Blippi and this transportation song is a perfect way to kick the week off.
Activity 3: Red light/ Green light
Everyone stand against a wall or at the starting line, When you say, ‘Green Light’ everyone will move forward, When you say ‘Red Light’ everyone must immediately stop. If players are still moving when you call ‘Red Light’, they must go back to the starting line.
Activity 4: Musical Chairs
Play music and have the players walk around the chair circle, while they pretend to drive a car. When the music stops, everyone must immediately sit in a chair. The children left standing are out. Remove another chair and continue until only one child is left.
Land Transportation Themed Songs
Sixteen action songs and rhymes all about Land Transportation to get those bodies moving and grooving. Click on the image to head over to the post.
Land Transportation Themed Books
Twenty of the best story picture books that are perfect for a Land Transportation theme. Click on the image below to read what these books are about.
Land Transportation Themed Literacy Activities
Activity 1: Land, Air & Water Transportation Bulletin Board
Cut out and laminate the pictures of the roads, railroad tracks and clouds. Use the wave template to cut out waves using blue construction paper, enough to cover the bottom side of your board. Use light blue construction paper as the sky background and staple to clouds onto this. Use green construction paper as the land part of the bulletin board. Staple or pin the cut-outs of the roads and the railway tracks on these.
Hand out the coloring pictures of the vehicles to the children and ask them to color and cut these out. Teacher cuts out and laminate the labels for re-use. When children are done ask them to come up to the bulletin board, tell the teacher if their vehicle is land, air or sea transport and let the teacher pin it in the correct area on the board. Don’t forget to pin the label near it. And you have a bulletin board!
Activity 2: Engine, Engine Number 9
Color the train engines. After watching the Engine Engine Number 9 video, children tap on the engine to the beat of the rhyme while saying it.
Center 1: ABC Parking Lot
Cut out and laminate the pictures of the vehicles. Laminate the ‘parking lot’ cards. Place all the pictures of the vehicles face down.
Children take turns turning these over and then matching the lower-case letter on the vehicle to the correct upper-case letter in the parking lot by ‘parking’ the car there.
Center 2: Roll & Throw Hand-Eye Coordination Center
Cut out and laminate the pictures of the vehicles. Place these on the floor in a row.
Children throw the dice, look at the vehicle next to the dice on the information card, then try to throw a soft toy onto that picture of a vehicle on the floor. If the soft toy touches the vehicle, the child gets the same number of points as on the dice.
Each child gets 3 throws with the soft toy. Write the children’s names in the heading section under ‘Scores’ and keep the scores there through tallying.
Center 3: Roll & Write Beginning Sounds Center
Download the Roll & Write Center here, then laminate the sheets for re-use or copy to send home. Children throw the dice and write the beginning sound of the vehicle in the block. Continue until all blocks have been written in or stop after a certain time period and count and compare.
Land Transportation Themed Math Activities
Activity: Name Trains
Color and cut out the train engine. Cut out one rectangle (train car) for each letter in your name. Write one letter on each rectangle. Arrange the engine and cars on the white construction paper and glue them on. Draw wheels for the cars using a black marker. Complete the ‘Our Names’ Survey.
Center 1: Board Game
Roll the die and move your vehicle the number of spaces shown. Does the vehicle shown in the space you landed on travel by land, water or by air? Pick up the top card.
If the card shows how the vehicle travels, keep the card. If the card correctly shows the way the vehicle travel and has the same border color as the background on the space, keep the card and throw the die again.
If the card does not show the correct way of travel, place it face down in the discard pile, If you land on a ladder you go up, if on a slide, you go down.
Center 2: Hot-Air Balloon Addition
In this fun, hands-on activity children will use a dice to add and record the amount of teddy-bear counters that get to fly away in their hot-air balloons
.
Center 3: Cover or Color
This game is played in pairs. The children take turns to throw the dice and color the corresponding number. Continue until all numbers have been covered or colored. The winner is the one that has colored or covered the most numbers.
Download the center here.
Land Transportation Themed Art
What you need:
- Green Paint
- Yellow paint
- Tray
- Paintbrush
- A bucket with water in (to clean the kids’ feet)
- Sturdy white paper
- Black marker
- Black construction (cut into circles for the wheels).
- yellow construction paper (cut into circles for the wheels and a rectangle for the roof)
How to complete the activity:
Put out some blocks and other toys for the children to play with. Call children individually and help them to paint one foot with green paint and then to press this foot down onto the paper. Help the kids to wash their feet.
Ask the children to use a paintbrush to paint the grass underneath the tractor and to finger print yellow dots on the grass (these will be chicks).
When the paint is dry, the children to glue the wheels on, draw legs on the yellow dots, give it eyes and a beak, and glue the roof on. Connect the roof with the tractor with a black marker. The children can decorate their pictures by drawing clouds, trees, a sun etc.
Land Transportation Themed Science
Sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ song with the following verses:
- The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish
- The horn on the bus goes toot, toot, toot
- The lights on the bus go on and off
- The engine on the bus goes vroom, vroom, vroom
- The doors on the bus go open and shut
Children cut out the words on the cut and paste sheet and label the bus.
STEM: Marbles & Play Dough Challenge
I got the fantastic idea for this activity over at frugalfun4boys.com. Click on the image to head over to their blog for full instructions.
Land Transportation Themed Snack Idea
I found the idea for these adorable apple cars on kids-cooking-activities.com. You will need apples cut in slices, 2 grapes per child and 2 toothpicks per child. Put these all together as seen in the picture, and enjoy!
Click on the images below to download the Land Transportation Themed Math & Literacy Centers, Printables and Activities.
