Transportation Update Week 1

So... there wasn't much Montessori happening this week. We had a couple of days at the beginning of the week before we flew up to NJ to help my cousin with her newborn. On Monday we had a playdate with some friends and tried a lot of our transportation activities. On Tuesday we were preoccupied with packing, but we got in a few more activities. Wednesday was our travel day (see here for details on how I pack to fly with a toddler), and we spent the rest of the week helping my cousin. We'll definitely do a second week with this theme so we can spend a little more time with these fun activities!

Here's what we did get to:

Practical Life

Clothes Pin Airplanes

We made one of these clothes pin airplanes from Somewhat Simple as a sample before our playdate. M liked helping with the glue, and assembling the wings and propeller to match the picture. A couple of M's friends made them, but M wasn't really interested during the playdate since she already had some new airplane toys to play with. These were very easy to make, and could easily become a more involved activity if your child painted or decorated the clothes pin and popsicle sticks before assembling.

Sensorial

Car Wash Sensory Bin

 Check out the full post to see three ways to make a Car Wash Sensory Bin.


Mini Airplane Sensory Bin

Since we were traveling, we didn't have our normal larger bins. I used the small baking pan that I packed to use with magnets, and filled it with a some water beads and cotton balls. M flew her airplanes through the "clouds." This later turned into a lake for her cars and safari animals.

Cars and Tunnels

We built a tunnel from a piece of construction paper, and M spent a lot of time pushing cars through her tunnel, around the porch, under the tables and chairs, etc. She compared how fast the different cars could roll, what kind of sounds they made on different surfaces, and made up stories as she drove them around the house.

Language

Transportation Flannel Boards

M created her own story with the transportation flannel board pieces. We were at the beach a lot over the summer, and spent some time hiking at Paris Mountain recently, so she told me a story about people driving from the beach to the mountains. I think she would also enjoy playing with these flannel board pieces as we read a related story.

Tracing Letters

I put out M's Magic Board and the letter T tracing plate. She did this for a little while, but she's not really into writing yet. We used this board again later in the week to trace pictures from a magazine - that was a lot more fun!

Math

Pay the Toll Coin Sorting

M loved this activity, and enjoyed learning the names of the different types of coins. She watches Mickey Mouse Clubhouse a lot, and they always pay for things from Clarabelle's store with coins. She sorted some of the coins, then started counting the pennies. When we did a sorting tray with beans, I had her close her eyes while I put some beans in the wrong compartment. She thought that was so funny, and she wanted me to close my eyes while she did the same this time.

Number Parking Lot

M liked this parking lot numbers game from B-Inspired Mama. We're working on identifying numerals, and this was a fun way to talk about what the numbers mean and to practice matching.

Science / Cultural Studies

Transportation Timeline

I pulled together a very basic timeline based on the different forms of transportation covered in one of our library books. I printed google images of different forms of transportation over time (feet, early boats, cars, planes, trains, etc.). After laminating the images, I added velcro to the back of the images and to some dry erase sentence strips. I thought I would use a dry erase marker to add dates to the strips, but it was really just too much information, so we just put them in order from oldest to most recent. She liked showing all of the pictures to Goofy after we displayed the timeline on her wall.

Balloon Racer Car

I bought a Balloon Car Racer at the dollar store to take on our trip. My cousin's dog was not a big fan, but M really liked it. She couldn't figure out how to blow up the balloon, but I showed her how to put her finger over the hole on the car after I blew it up so she could take the car where ever she wanted to race it. She wanted to know why it worked, so we talked briefly about action-reaction forces that propel the car forward. I love her questions!

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There's a lot more to come next week when we return from our travels. Check out some other ideas on the T is for Transportation post.