Tag: trucks

Dump Truck Domino Counting

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Here was a fun way to combine Veronika’s truck play with a little early counting! She can count by rote up to about 20, but it’s still early for her to connect the idea that those rising numbers correlate to one more thing added each time.

We chose dominoes for the activity because we have lots of them and they fit easily into the truck bed. My hope was that physically them out would help her make the link. First, we just started filling up the truck randomly:

She eagerly counted along as we placed each domino in, and we made it all the way into the teens before she was too tempted to… dump!

For the next round, I challenged her to fill the truck with only a certain color. This meant we only counted as high as ten, and then it was time to dump. We repeated with the remaining colors.

For older kids, you can even make predictions about the point at which dominoes will start to spill out, without having to tip back the bed of the truck at all.

We played this version toward the end, piling in all the dominoes (confession: we stopped counting!) and watching them spill out. Chances are your toddler will stay happy with trucks and dominoes for some solo play after the lesson, too.

All Gone!

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In my experience, toddlers love dumping things to and from containers. This game plays right to that interest while introducing (or reinforcing) the notion of “all gone!”.

I set up a tray filled with some of Veronika’s building blocks and then placed an empty bin a little ways away (far enough that she’d have to trot over to it, but not so far away as to be a big journey!). Then I handed her a smaller bucket that she could fill with some of the blocks.

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“Go and fill the empty bin!” I encouraged with a big smile.

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She made a few trips back and forth like this, until now the first tray was empty and the bin was the full one. “All gone!” I said in mock delight as I held up the tray.

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Don’t be surprised if your toddler starts parroting this phrase and wants to go back and forth between the containers several times.

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When Veronika lost interest in this first version of play, we added in a new element: wheels. More specifically, she has a new dump truck that was perfect for loading and unloading the blocks.

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She loved to fill this one up and then zoom it to the tray to tilt back the load.

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In fact, a dump truck like this would be a great way to encourage a toddler to clean up, vrooming each load from a messy floor to a bin.

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Ten Favorite Transportation Books

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Who says only boys like books about trucks and cars and things that go? We’ve been reading so many books about vehicles lately that I thought would share some of Veronika’s favorites, which hopefully can help fill your home library, too!

One: Baby’s Very First Truck Book, Usborne Books

This one is almost guaranteed to please because it’s not just a book about a truck… It drives!

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We also love that the delivery truck drops off small vehicles (think scooters and bikes) at each stop it makes.

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Two: Little Coloring: Things That Go, Usborne Books

Story time can still be hard for Veronika to sit through, which is why we love this coloring book with text. Each page has a short sentence about a vehicle that I can read as Veronika scribbles!

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Three: Little Blue Truck, Alice Schertle

What’s not to love about this original book from what has gone on to became an equally lovable series? Animal noises, friends helping friends, fun rhyming words…. And every toddler wants to chime in on that little Beep Beep Beep!

Four: Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go

I honestly find this book overwhelming, but my kids love it so much we count it as a favorite. You can read pieces of it here and there, or settle in for a marathon session on days that deserve an extra-long story.

Five: The Little Engine That Could, Watty Piper

This classic features a fun variety of engines for any train lover, but at the heart it’s a story about perseverance and kindness. I still choke up reading the ending every time!

Six: The Big Book of Big Trucks, Usborne Books

If your kids love big trucks (and I mean big!) they’ll love the super-sized fold-out pages in this book about some of the biggest vehicles ever made on the planet.

Seven: Colorful World: Vehicles, Nastja Holtfreter

This book takes Veronika’s favorite theme of vehicles but poses questions that become increasingly tricky as the story goes on. She can readily identify which scooter is different, or which one is a tow truck,. But what about pinpointing a truck driving in a different direction? Or new vocabulary like which one is a convertible. High marks for the writing in this book!

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Eight: Shine-a-Light at the Garage, Carron Brown and Charlie Davis

The Shine-a-Light series always makes books intriguing since kids shine a flashlight to uncover a mystery on each page. In this particular volume, kids learn all the goings-on inside a mechanic’s garage. We love the technical details!

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Nine: Night, Night Busy Town, Usborne Books

You get multiple books for the price of one here. Each sleepy vehicle on the chunky board book pages has a favorite bedtime story to read.

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These mini books pull out with a tab and are just the right size for toddler hands. Each one then features a different learning theme (numbers, shapes, opposites, etc.).

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Ten: Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, Sherri Duskey Rinker

The rhymes are fantastic in this one and the construction trucks curl up to sleep with teddy bears. Enough said.

Okay, one last notable mention: We love Little Tug by Stephen Savage for a sweet bedtime read about a sometimes-neglected category of vehicles: boats!

What vehicle books are a must-have in your family? Please share in the comments!

Cloud Dough with Vehicles

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It’s been a long time since I made cloud dough, which is basically just a super soft play dough requiring only flour and oil. In the past I’ve made this with baby oil, but this time I used regular vegetable oil.

Cloud dough should be 8 parts flour to 1 part oil, so I used 4 cups flour and 1/2 cup oil. Mix with a spoon or your fingers until incorporated.

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To add purpose to the play, we added Veronika’s construction vehicles. I also gave her two little cups that I thought we could use to mold sandcastles, but she preferred to use them for scooping, pouring, and filling up her trucks.

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Or vice versa, using the trucks to fill up the cups!

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It was fun to drive trucks through the dough and make tracks.

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Or just to sift through with her fingers. This stuff is always so soft and fluffy.

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It’s also nice for play because it clumps together enough to momentarily hold a shape.

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And when she tired of the game, a quick rinse of cold water got the vehicles clean!

Play Dough Construction Site

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Veronika loves to play with her set of construction trucks, and I am all for any sort of gender-neutral play like this! Today I supplemented the fun by adding in a play dough “construction site”.

This really couldn’t have been easier to set up. I mashed some play dough flat on the bottom of a shallow tray to the be the dirt, then rolled some into balls to fill the dump truck like large ‘rocks’. Finally, I rolled some into ‘logs’ for the bulldozer to push.

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The rest was up to her! She loved saying “full” and “empty” as she took the ‘rocks’ in and out of her dump truck.

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She might not have understood that she was now the foreman at an important construction lot, but she sure loved squishing the play dough and driving the vehicles around!

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We also put the empty play dough containers upside down like construction cones, which she could then drive around – or bump into!

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This was an easy sensory tray that kept her busy for quite a while.

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Painting with Trucks

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Veronika loves her little set of construction trucks, and she loves paint, so today I thought we’d combine the two. It turns out she was more into finger painting than truck painting, but at least we had good fun.

I started out by taping two pieces of construction paper in a shallow craft bin, and setting out her trucks. Add blobs of paint directly on the paper and show your toddler how to roll cars or trucks through.

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Tire tracks!

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I thought Veronika would be fascinated, but the paint blobs themselves were just too enticing. Soon we just had two very blue hands (“Hello fingers!” she said).

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I did get her to drive the trucks back and forth a few times, but it was always quickly back to smearing her hands right through all those tire tracks.

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I thought she might get more into the tire tracks if she had a bigger surface to drive along. So we cleaned up the first version and set up a second. I taped a long piece of craft paper to the floor, and this time I only dabbed down a little black paint, just enough to drive through.

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This time she did maneuver the cars for a few passes, and did seem to notice the tracks.

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But even the little blobs of paint were irresistible for her fingers.

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Soon we had smeary black hands!

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Well, she had a blast, and of course half the fun is the “car wash” at the end. We put the trucks in soapy water and I gave her a few rags. This was arguably even more enjoyable than the painting itself!

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So start to finish, it made for a great project.

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Cream of Wheat Imagination Bowl

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One of Veronika’s latest words is “truck” and she has a set of construction trucks that she loves to play with, just right for toddler-sized hands. Today, I engaged her imagination by making an indoor “construction site”. Cream of wheat made the perfect base for this easy sensory play; it’s simple to clean up from floors or wipe off of clothing, and it also makes it okay if a toddler decides to taste the “sand”, resulting in a much more pleasant experience than an outdoor sandbox!

Once I demonstrated how she could drive her trucks through the pretend construction zone, she jumped right to it. I showed her how she could use the bulldozer blade to push through the cream of wheat, which was a big hit.

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I loved watching her concentration as she carefully sprinkled “sand” into the dump truck.

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She also loved just vrooming the various trucks, which made fun tracks in the “sand”.

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Trucks lend themselves naturally to lots of onomatopoeia as you play. Be sure to make  beeps and vrooms and other car noises, and your toddler is sure to join in!

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What a great way to get the imagination going and have hands-on sensory play.

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Learning Things That Go

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There are so many ways to teach toddlers about the various vehicles in the world, whether that means cars and trucks, or boats, or planes, or everything in between. Most obviously you can point these things out in the real world or read about them in books. But toddlers are so tactile, so consider hands-on learning with stamps or stickers that depict things that go!

First up: stickers. Veronika is currently obsessed with stickers, so we had lots of fun with a reusable sticker book from Melissa & Doug. She was a little frustrated that the big planes and trucks wouldn’t stick to her belly…

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…but loved that she could lift them off the page over and over.

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Next up: stamps! I purchased a stamp set with big chunky ones just right for toddler-sized hands.

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We talked about the image on each stamp before I pulled out the ink pads. Of course the ink itself was more fascinating for a while!

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But soon I showed her how to press a stamp down into the ink, which then appears like magic when pressed on paper. She was a little young for this activity, impishly trying to eat the stamps, so we tucked the ink pad away. But I loved that this was both a vocab lesson and an “art” activity.

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One final option: felt pieces featuring things that go. Veronika loves her set with cut-outs of planes, trains, and more.

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Little felt shapes like this of things that go are great for, well, when you’re on the go!

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Whichever medium you choose, there’s lots of hands-on learning and fun to be had!

Truck Stop

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Just a super quick post today! We haven’t played with blocks in a while, and needed a way to make them novel. Enter this cute “truck stop” idea from High Five magazine.

Travis added a fueling station first of course, where the trucks and buses could gas up.

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Then he decided we needed a diner for the truckers to eat at!

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What novel way has your child played with blocks recently? Please share in the comments!

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Duct Tape City Bus Playset

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This was a project that sounded daunting, and so I put it off for a while. But it turned out to be very easy and very cute. My hesitation stemmed from the fact that I needed to purchase magnet sheets and duct tape sheets (note: not a roll of duct tape), which I couldn’t find at my local craft store. Both are readily available on Amazon, so armed with these supplies, we were off and running… er, driving!

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To make duct tape vehicles, peel the sticky side off the duct tape sheet and line up evenly with the sticky side of the magnet sheet. Cut out rectangles to be your cars, buses, and trucks.

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Travis loved the idea of drawing our vehicles. We used permanent marker, and he scribbled away with imaginative designs.

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Meanwhile I added a few vehicles that he could readily recognize, including a city bus…

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…and a propeller plane (Travis’s current obsession). Garbage trucks and cars rounded out our city neighborhood.

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To make your cityscape, tape down two pieces of paper to the back of a baking sheet. Adults and older kids can map out streets and buildings.

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Travis was thrilled to help decorate, and was very focused on drawing a crossing guard. I was so proud when I saw him draw in a nose and smile, his most true-to-life people yet!

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Once your city is drawn, add your magnet vehicles and zoom them along however you like!

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This playset is one your kids can return to over and over again.

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