T is for Truck Preschool Unit

Our second preschool unit was T is for Truck. But we expanded to include cars and trains too. I guess you could call it T is for Transportation. I don't know a lot about cars and trucks, but we still managed to have a great time learning about them and playing with them. We spent two weeks on this unit, and still didn't get to everything I wanted to do.

Math Activities

• Truck Sorting- Gather a collection of cars and trucks and sort them in different ways. We sorted by color.
• Pattern Block Pictures- We used these Melissa and Doug pattern blocks to make pictures of different types of transportation. Some pictures came in the set with the blocks, but you can print your own pictures for free from Prekinders.
• Delivery Truck- Sweet Girl picked a number card and then counted and loaded that many blocks onto the delivery truck and drove them to the "construction site."
• Color Delivery Truck- We used the same delivery truck, but this time we were delivering colored blocks. I laid out colored pieces of construction paper, and then gave  Sweet Girl some Megablocks to load on the truck and deliver to the matching color of construction paper. 
• Foam Shape Blocks- I cut shapes out of foam and gave them to Sweet Girl to make cars and trucks out of. She surprised me by designing her own rocket.
• Truck Measuring- We used unifix cubes to measure different cars and trucks and then compare their length.
• Truck Graphing- We sorted the cars once again by color, and then lined them up to form a bar graph. 

Literacy Activities

• T Writing- We started the unit by practicing the sound that T makes and by writing upper and lower case Ts.
• Car Lacing Cards- I printed off these free car lacing cards from Busy Little Bugs.IT's not exactly writing, but it's still good for developing fine motor skills.
• Transportation Word Spelling- I downloaded these transportation words . Sweet girl used letter tiles to spell the transportation words.
• Name Train- I cut out "train cars" and wrote the letters of the names for each member of our family. Then Sweet Girl lined up the cars to spell each of our names.
• Truck Letters- We lined up our toy cars and trucks to form letters.
• Letter Wheels- I cut out wheels for our car and wrote upper case and lower case letters on them. Sweet Girl had to match up the letters and put them on the car. 

Other Activities

• Stoplight- We made a stoplight out of construction paper. I traced the circles for the lights, and then let Sweet Girl cut them out.
• Red Light Green Light- We played red light, green light with the stoplight we made.
• Singing- We sang songs like "The Wheels on the Bus."
• Playdough Tracks- We drove a monster truck toy through playdough to make track marks. A side note, we had to push a lot harder than I thought we would to be able to make any tracks.
• Tire Track Painting- We did a similar activity the next day when we drove the truck through paint and then drove it onto paper to create a really awesome textured picture.
• Sidewalk Chalk Roads- We drew a set of roads and a town on the sidewalk and then drove our cars around town.
• Building Ramps- We experimented with building ramps and their steepness and rolling our trucks down. We ended up sending them down our fold up slide.
• Car wash Sensory Bin- This one we didn't get to, and I was really bummed. I thought it would be a lot of fun. The plan was to fill a bin with soapy water and sponges and wash our toy cars.

Finally to wrap up our truck unit we had a pizza movie party where we watched Disney's Cars. Sweet Girl had never seen it before, and it was a major hit. We had so much fun. Now onto the next unit.