Are you starting a transportation theme in your preschool classroom or homeschool? Keep reading for the most engaging Things That Go preschool activities around!
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THINGS THAT GO PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES
One of the most exciting themes to teach (whether you’re homeschooling or teaching in a preschool or kindergarten classroom) is Things That Go. Little ones get revved up when learning about and participating in activities about different modes of transportation! They love cars, bicycles, airplanes, and more. This leads to interactive play and STEM exploration. So let’s get ready to hop on board and build new skills!
Keep reading for over 25 transportation activities for your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students. These ideas include literacy, math, fine and gross motor skills, art, and more. Grab your printables for math & literacy here. Oh, and there’s a freebie, too!
If you want a copy of my yearly themes (including an editable version where you can type in your own themes), check out this freebie. (*Please note: You will need to download this file to your computer and then open it with Adobe in order to add your own themes. You cannot add your themes from your web browser.)
TRANSPORTATION ACTIVITIES: LITERACY
Before you get started with your transportation theme, make sure you have your books all ready to go! You can check out our favorite books for this theme in this post. There are over 80 books for you to choose from! Make sure to request these from your local library (or order them from Amazon) a few weeks before you start your theme.
You’re definitely going to want to start your Things that Go theme with these vocabulary cards! Do your littles know the difference between a helicopter and a plane? How about a blimp and a hot air balloon? These cards are the perfect way to introduce your little learners to the 15 transportation related words they’ll be learning about over the course of this theme. You can use these vocabulary cards in your writing center, as a Write the Room activity, or as a picture match.
“Color the Room” is a variation of “Write the Room,” where you hide the vocabulary word cards around the room for your little one to find. Once they do, have them match picture on the vocabulary card to the picture on the activity page. They can choose to color the matching picture or simply circle it. This is a great variation for little ones who aren’t ready to write the words on their own yet.
Play dough is such a fun way to work on fine motor skills with little ones! These transportation play dough mats include a clip art picture as well as a play dough picture of each vehicle. Depending on your little one’s skill level, you can read the sentence on the card (or have them read any words they know), trace the word, and make the picture using play dough. This will help them relate the word to the picture.
Syllable awareness is an important phonological awareness skill that little ones need to develop in order to become strong readers. This activity asks little ones to sort pictures based on the number of syllables in the word (1, 2, 3, or 4) syllables). Have them say the word and count the syllables. They’ll put the picture on the correct number mat and then choose where on the mat it goes according to the picture on the top left corner (does that vehicle fly in the air, go on water, or drive on land?)
Decoding is a lot of fun, and these mystery words are a big hit with preschoolers and kindergarteners! This activity has your little one matching letters from the decoding board to the picture strips to find the mystery word. We used these letters to build the words. If they are able, have your little one put the words in ABC order and/or match them up to the transportation vocabulary word cards.
Do you know the difference between “onset” and “rime?” The “onset” of the word is the initial consonant or consonants, and the “rime” is the vowel and everything after. Your little one will use the “onset” spinner to find the first letter and the “rime” spinner to find the rest of the word (we love these spinners for this!) Have them place the letters on the line and touch the dots as they say each letter sound. Then they can drive a toy car under the word as they say the whole word. Is it a “real” word or a “nonsense” word?
One of the best parts about doing a transportation theme with your preschoolers or kindergarteners is talking about all the places transportation vehicles can take you! This expands your little one’s understanding of the world around them.
For this activity, talk with your little one about where they might go to if they could fly on an airplane. Have them draw a picture of the place, adding as much detail as possible. Then have them tell you about the place and why they chose it. (You can write about that place on their paper as they dictate to you, or they can attempt to write about it if they’re developmentally ready for that stage.)
Visual discrimination is an important part of reading development. After all, we want your child to see the difference between a letter “b” and a letter “d,” and that starts by practicing visual discrimination skills. In this activity, give your little one time to try to find the one picture in the strip that is different than the rest. Have them tell you why it is different. You can also talk about where the vehicle travels; on land or sea or air.
When my son was in preschool, he was obsessed with trains, so incorporating train tracks into his fine motor practice was a great way to keep him motivated! Before we ever ask kids to write letters, we need to give them a chance to make different types of lines: straight, curvy, wavy, jagged, and more. Have your little one use different ways to trace these train tracks. They can use their finger, marker, play dough, black beans or small legos. They could even cut the lines with scissors.
Lots of little ones like monster trucks, and you can actually use this interest to work on syllable identification. How many syllables are in the different monster truck names like “Grave Digger” and “Megalodon”? You can also ask your child to tell you the beginning or ending sound of each name. This type of purposeful play is so amazing at teaching kids foundational skills in a fun way!
TRANSPORTATION ACTIVITIES: MATH
Does your little one know what a pentagon or an oval is? How about a crescent or an octagon? This activity has your little one learning about different shapes. After talking with them about the shapes and what they are called, they will look at the wheels of the trains on the picture cards and find the shape card that matches. Have them say the shape name and how many sides it has. You may have to help them with the shapes they are not familiar with, but this will be great practice for kindergarten!
After familiarizing your little one with the train shape cards, use the cards to play Memory. Place the cards face down on the table and have them pick two cards at a time to try to make a match. The one with the most matches wins the game! You can also incorporate real trains & train tracks that you have at home or in your classroom to make this even more engaging.
Talk about repeating patterns with your little one, and then introduce this hands-on train pattern activity. They will choose a card and create that train pattern on their mat. Depending on their skill level, they can either create simple AB patterns with their trains, or they might be ready to try more complex patterns such as AAB or ABB. They could even challenge you to copy a pattern they come up with on their own!
One of the main skills little ones need to work on is ways to make 10. When my daughter was in kindergarten, her teacher focused on all the ways to make 10 (“Friends of 10”) to help with addition and subtraction. The Animal Bus Ten Frame is a fun way to introduce this skill and show your littles that no matter which number is first, the answer to an addition problem will stay the same. Using different colored manipulatives such as pop poms or buttons, have your little one put them on the bus according to the card on the top left corner of the board. How many animals are there all together? Can they write the addition problem in the boxes that add up to 10?
I love introducing nonstandard units of measurement such as play dough or paper clips before using a tape measure to discuss standard units of measurement. For this activity, you can choose what to use to have your child measure the line from the bus to the building. Then they can write the number on the card. Repeat on all the cards and then compare which length is shortest and which is longest.
This is a fun game to play using a dice and the Things That Go vocabulary cards. Placing the vocabulary cards on the table (either mixed up or sorted by land, sea, or air), have your little one roll the dice and move that many spaces on the game board. The color of the space they land on will determine what sort of vehicle they will pick. Whoever has the most cards when someone reaches the finish wins the game!
After discussing with your little one about the Coast Guard and what they do, they will pick a Coast Guard number card. Have them tell you the number and trace it with their finger. Then have them count out that many lifeboats to place below the number card. Who would they rescue if they were in the Coast Guard?
For this number bonds activity, depending on your little one’s skill level, pick the 5 airplane mat or the 10 helicopter mat. Have them choose a numbered card and place it on the board in a cloud. Using small manipulatives such as mini marshmallows or cotton balls, place that many “clouds” under the number. Can your child figure out how many MORE clouds they need to get to 5 on the airplane mat or 10 on the helicopter mat? They will find that numbered card and place it on the other cloud and add their “clouds” under that number. Then have them tell you or write the addition problem if able, such as 1 + 4 = 5.
This is a great activity to help with fine motor development and counting. Using clothespins for game pieces, your little one will move up the race track depending on the roll of a dice. You could also use this game to include gross motor skills by having them do as many physical activities (like jumping jacks or squats) as the number they roll on the dice. Of course, whoever reaches the top of the racetrack first wins the game!
These FREE counting cards can be used for all sorts of counting activities with transportation… counting trains, boats, airplanes and more! They can count the wheels on different modes of transportation or count how many places they’ve visited. Have them tell you what they want to count…anything works to reinforce number learning!
This activity (along with all of our freebies!) can be downloaded from the Free Activity Library. If you’re already a member of our email community, you can click HERE to head to the Free Activity Library, enter your password (it’s on your most current email from me), and download your copy!
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TRANSPORTATION HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES, CRAFTS, & SNACKS
Your little one will be SO engaged when you combine your transportation theme with name practice, which is an important kindergarten readiness skill. Using red, yellow, and green circles, each with a letter of your little one’s name, have them glue them in the correct order on a black stoplight. The letters should be in the red, yellow, & green order like a stoplight (but you can tell in this example, I made a mistake and put the green circle on top! Whoops!) Maybe the stoplights can be put up around the room for decoration!
This game is similar to the classic game “Red Light, Green Light”, but instead of just saying “red light” to stop and “green light” to go, you will hold up a letter card. Your little one will move toward the other side of the room if that letter IS in their name, but they can’t move if that letter is NOT in their name. This game is more fun when there are multiple players. The first one to make it across the room wins!
Want to incorporate more STEM into your day? Try this experiment! Have your little one find things around the room to test and see if they will sink or float. Ask them to give you their sink/ float hypothesis for each item before testing. Are they correct? They can then sort the items into sink/ float piles and count them when testing is complete. Which pile has more?
Paper airplanes are fun to make and fly around the room, and they’re an easy way to develop fine motor skills. All you need is a sheet of paper and maybe some tape. There are many tutorials on line for making them. Which airplane can fly the best?
If there are train tracks available, have your little one put them together any way they want. (We have this set and absolutely LOVE it!) This is a great way to develop executive functioning skills such as planning, organizing, and executing on a goal. It also develops critical thinking, creative thinking, and flexible thinking, not to mention it develops fine motor skills. When the track is done, try it out with a train!
Did you know…playing with Hot Wheels on tracks is actually helping little ones with mathematical thinking? It’s true! Without realizing it, they are learning about how angles, speed, and force affect how the Hot Wheels cars can stay on the tracks and do loops and such. They have will a lot of fun experimenting with different set-ups! (This is the Hot Wheels set shown in the picture…my son LOVES it!)
Here’s a transportation sweet treat sure to make your little ones smile! Using graham cracker pieces covered in frosting, peanut butter, or cream cheese, have them put M&Ms on to look light a traffic light. You could even make a game out of eating them by saying “green”(for go ahead and eat) and “red” (for stop eating). Frosting the graham crackers and adding the M&Ms are good for fine motor skills building, too!
THINGS THAT GO PRESCHOOL STORYTIME
Looking for some screen time you can feel good about? Head over to my YouTube channel and have your little one watch my Things That Go storytime! This storytime is filled with songs, finger plays, and of course…stories! We also focus on the letter and sound for “Vv” as in “vehicle.” Click here to watch and keep the fun going for your transportation theme!
THINGS THAT GO PRESCHOOL & PRE-K FUN
I hope these ideas helped you fill-in your Transportation lesson plans for your preschool classroom or homeschool! All of the printables for this unit can be found in my Things that Go Preschool Activity Pack.
What types of transportation preschool activities do you plan for your littles? Do you have any fun activities that would be great to add to this list? Comment below or find me on Instagram [@littleslovelearningblog] and let me know!
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Happy Learning!
