Beep Beep! It’s Transportation week! Here’s all the fun we had for weeks 37 & 38 of Tot School.
Our Focus Board for weeks 37 & 38 of Tot School included the letter T, the number 4, an Octagon shape, and the color Red. While doing our activities for our Transportation theme we tried to focus on these four items throughout both weeks! We review our Focus Board daily along with our Calendar time and daily songs. If you missed our post about our new daily routines, you can check them out here.
We started our week off with the books Sleep Train by Jonathan London and Things That Go! by Amy Pixton. Things That Go! is part of the Indestructibles Series of books made to be super tough for babies and toddlers. These books cannot be ripped or torn…super plus if you have a little one who can get a little too excited to turn those pages! Each page in the Things That Go! Book is dedicated to a certain theme such as in the air or on the road. There is even a construction themed page. The only thing I found lacking was the absence of a train. Enter Sleep Train. This book is a super cute bedtime story counting all the different types of cars you would see on a train, and was the perfect addition to our Transportation themed weeks. We read our books daily and Grace loved to point out all the different vehicles and types of transportation in Things That Go!
Our first official activity was a Transportation themed sensory bin that came out the first day we started our theme. This bin stayed out through both weeks and included our red color texture card, various puzzles of cars, trucks, trains, our number, shape, and letter of the week and also had some wooden cars and a truck, a plastic boat, a train, and an octagon magnet. Grace loved playing with all the items in this bin and we used several items for other activities you’ll see below.
Our media choices for our Transportation theme included several StoryBots’ YouTube videos including: Vehicles, The Letter T, & The Number 4. We also watched Pancake Manor’s Red YouTube video as well as their version of The Wheels on the Bus & Row Row Row Your Boat. We also watched Sesame Street’s Jack Black Defines an Octagon video on YouTube and enjoyed singing along with Barefoot Books’ We All Go Traveling By YouTube video as well.
Our next activity for our Transportation themed weeks was spent at a local Bike Shop that Grace’s Grandparents own. In addition to attempting riding a bike around the shop, Grace enjoyed playing with their wooden train set they have for all the grandkids to enjoy while there. Grace is just learning how to fit the tracks together, but she especially loves rolling the little trains around even if they aren’t on the tracks!
Our next activity focused on our letter from our Focus Board. T is for Transportation this week, and I found a free printable road letters set on Pinterest. If you would like to have a copy of your own I have pinned it to our Tot School Board on Pinterest which you can follow (link below). I printed only the T and taped it to a tray we use for lots of different activities, then gave Grace the wooden cars and truck from her bin. She traced the T by rolling the cars along the road, and happily said “Beep Beep” the whole time! We also counted the wheels on each car to go along with our Number from our Focus Board. Grace played with this activity for a good while before going on to something else but I left it out for her to enjoy along with her sensory bin. She revisited this activity multiple times throughout our themed weeks.
Grace played with transportation themed stickers for our next activity. I happened across this really cool set of reusable stickers and mats by Melissa and Doug by accident, and I am so glad I did! The set included 5 different scenes, and corresponding sticker sheets…reusable sticker sheets! The scenes included a harbor, airport, road way, train station, and construction site, and this set was a lot larger than I expected it to be. The best part…it was only $5 on Amazon, and we can continue using it for a good amount of time to come! Grace enjoyed being able to place the different types of vehicles wherever she wanted and could easily take them up and move them around. Minus the train pictured above, I only handed Grace four vehicles per scene and we would count them together since 4 is our number for our current theme.
We sang an additional song for our Transportation themed weeks along with our daily song selections that are apart of our daily calendar routine. You can find a link to those songs at the end of this post. Our new song for weeks 37 & 38 of Tot School was I’m a Little Airplane to the tune of I’m a Little Tea Pot. While singing this song I would stretch my arms out and glide from side to side like an airplane for Grace to see. She could never quite mimic my moves exactly, but it wasn’t for lack of trying!
Most of the time she would just raise her hands above her head and twirl around while I sang the song as you can see in the photo above. This photo is also proof that you can Tot School anywhere. I snapped this photo at Grace’s doctor’s office, while we were waiting for her doctor to come in and check her ears. We “flew” all around that room singing our song just passing time till her doctor arrived!
I grabbed all the boats I could find in our stash for our next activity. A bath with boats! We’ve been emphasizing boats being in water during our Transportation themed weeks so what better way to drive that home than to put all our boats in water! Grace enjoyed trolling her little boats around and playing with the foam boats on the shower walls during this particular bath. And of course every mode of transportation has gotten a “Beep Beep” from Grace regardless of type…Ha!
We worked on name building for our next activity. Again I found another freebie on Pinterest, a bus printable that each letter of her name could be written on and can be used as a puzzle. I printed the bus, wrote each letter of her name in the spaces, laminated it, then cut out the sections. What you don’t see in the photo above is the name we call Grace for security reasons. But each one of the bus puzzle pieces has a letter on them so Grace can practice spelling her name. Until this activity name building is a relatively new concept for Grace. While we do have a wooden name puzzle we haven’t started emphasizing how to spell her name until now. I would point out each letter and say them and Grace would repeat them and I of course told her what it spelled. Putting the front of the bus and the back of the bus in the correct order was the easiest part for Grace, the middle pieces will come with some more practice. We will definitely be pulling this puzzle out again and again.
Our last activity worked on those gross motor skills and let us focus on our shape, the octagon and our color, Red. We played Red Light, Green Light by using hand made stop and go signs. I took some red and green card stock and traced out an octagon (red) and circle (green). I wrote “Stop” on the octagon and “Go” on the circle. I laminated them and cut out the shapes and glued popsicle sticks to each for a handle. To play our game I put on one of our favorite Pancake Manor songs, Lulu’s Shake Break, and we started dancing to the YouTube video. Grace has been saying “Ready, Set, Go” for a while now so I said that when the video started and held up the “Go” sign. After a few dance moves I hit pause on the video and yelled “Stop” holding up the red octagon sign, and froze. After a few seconds I switched signs and yelled “Go” hitting play on the video and we danced some more. I repeated this through the whole video. While Grace did not freeze like I did when I said stop and showed the sign, she did stop dancing and would yell “Uh Oh!” And when I would say “Go” she would start dancing and doing the moves from the video. This was a really fun activity for Grace, and I am actually planning on using it again to help with some behavior training. Also, remember our favorite book about shapes, Circle Rolls? Well there is a line in the book where Octagon yells “Stop”, and we ask Grace all the time what Octagon says. This activity really allowed us to demonstrate that concept rather than her just repeat it from the book.
On the last day of our Transportation theme we curled up on the couch as a family and watched some Cars Toons. We have been loving Disney+ so far and Grace loved watching Mater and all of his shenanigans. She even read her first word “hiccups” when it appeared as the title on the screen much to her Mommy & Daddy’s surprise!
That’s all the fun we had for our Transportation theme! This was a really fun theme to explore with Grace, and I’m happy we will be able to continue using some of our activities from this particular Tot School theme in the future! 🚗
If you’d like to see a sample of how I currently plan out themes for a week check out the Tot School Schedule 🍒 v2.0 page!
You can still see our original Tot School Schedule by visiting the Tot School Schedule 🍍 v1.0 page.
You can also see a list of this year’s themes on the 2019 Tot School Themes ☂️ page.
You can find all our daily songs, their tunes and lyrics by visiting our Tot School Songs 🎵 page.
EVERYDAY a little Grace 🌷
Everyday a Little Grace 