myGanBlog: Cars, Trucks and Busses...the first part of travel

A look at this week:
It has wheels, four to be exact. What could it be? This was a big discussion this week in class as we started talking about transportation. One of the favorite activities this week was working with me on wheel counting where the children took pictures of bikes, cars, busses and trucks, counted the wheels and then matched the number they came up with to the number cards that were on the floor. The other top choice of activities was the car making project where the children were able to create cars, busses and trucks out of art materials. These cars are being added to our newly made Alphabet Highway! The letters will be coming soon! In addition to these two activities we have started getting ready for our pretend travel by making passports where the children had the chance to get their passport picture taken, write their first names, last names, birthdates and home town. Over the next week or two the children will be putting stamps in their passports when they complete different activities. They also will be encouraged to write about the activity or dictate something to me. We also got to paint with cars, making car tracks on paper. The children built ramps out of the blocks and sent cars down the ramps to see which cars went further and faster and which ramps worked better. Some of the children enjoyed looking at maps and doing the map puzzles while others enjoyed playing with cars on the track lid of the sand table. It was also fun to listen to how the children played together during exploration time with I took out some different cars. The final activity for the week was the chance to make their very own license plate! I brought in a license plate from Florida. We looked out the window at the Oregon and Washington license plates that were in the parking lot and then the children were able to design their own license plate and even stamp letters onto it!

Conversations from the week:
While working with some children on their numbers this week, I had the chance to overhear a conversation that was going on when children were looking at the maps that were in the room. It was a short conversation, but it was enjoyable to hear that some of the children were understanding exactly what the map work was all about!

Miriam was holding a map in her hand.
Miriam: Mussie, we need to do to California.
Mussie (doing a different activity): No.
Miriam: Let’s just pretend.
Miriam continues to look at the map for another minute or so.
Miriam: Now, where should we go?

A look at next week:
We will be continuing our look at different transportation. Next week we are going to take it to the air as we discuss airports and space travel. The children will have the chance to help build a space ship, write about what they see on their trip to outer space and talk about the words behind, above, over and under.