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10 Transportation Activities Your Preschooler Can Do at Home

Preschoolers are fascinated by vehicles. And transportation activities for preschoolers can actually help teach important concepts, like letters, numbers, cooperation, planning, and more.

Whether your kiddo is obsessed with tractors, trains, or trucks, these 10 transportation activities for preschoolers will give you something to do on a lazy afternoon while boosting important preschool skills.

1. Chairs, Chairs, Chairs

Let your preschooler rearrange the kitchen chairs to create a world of pretend transportation. Line the chairs up in a row to create a train, add aisles for an airplane, or create a replica of the family car.

Grab a few props from around the house — a suitcase, dress-up clothes, backpack, books for the flight, cardboard IDs for check-in, and more. Your child will have a great time playing pretend, but they’ll also be building vocabulary, increasing planning skills, and strengthening their imagination.

{Read: Why Your Child Needs Pretend Play}

2. Workin’ at the Carwash

A carwash sensory bin is a great backyard activity for a hot day, or a perfect kitchen-sink activity when it’s too cold to play with water outside.

Fill up a tub with soapy water, give your child some cleaning items (washcloth, brush, toothbrush), and let them give their toy cars a carwash. This sensory activity helps their brain create stronger connections, develops motor skills, builds imagination, and more.

[Read: The Benefits of Multisensory Learning]

Another fun sensory bin transportation activity for preschoolers is to make a construction sensory bin with sand, gravel, and rocks.

3. Make a Steering Wheel

Use construction paper or cardboard to make your own steering wheels, and then let your child use the wheel in their play. Have them bring their steering wheel along on car rides so they can backseat drive!

4. Active Transportation Activities for Preschoolers

Get your preschooler moving by teaching them to use their body as transportation in their pretend play. They can “fly” around the room as airplanes by putting their arms out to their sides. Crawling on the floor, they can use an arm to scoop up toys as they pretend to be a tractor (this could be helpful during cleanup time too!).

5. Car Painting

Have your child express themselves creatively with the transportation theme by painting with toy cars. Using washable paint, let your child use plastic toy cars as paintbrushes on their canvas. This will build creativity, reinforce the concept of cause-and-effect, and build fine motor skills.

6. Pull Out the Sleds

You might have some fun transportation props sitting in your garage. For example, a sled can make a fun boat on your living room floor. Your preschooler can take the lead in pretending where that boat is headed — is it going on a fishing trip, heading across the ocean to another continent, or ferrying stuffed animals across a river?

Let your child’s imagination drive this activity.

7. A City on the Floor

You might already have a rug with roads, buildings, and stop signs. These are great tools for imaginative play. But if you don’t have one, build one with your child.

Use masking tape to create roads. If your child wants a more-involved city, you can build buildings out of cardboard, toilet paper rolls, and more.

8. Make a Parking Lot

Use a cardboard box to make a parking lot for your child’s toy cars.

This is a great way to practice numbers or letters. Label each parking spot with a number or letter, and then label each car with a corresponding number or letter. Ask your child to park each car in its coordinating parking spot.

You can increase the challenge by asking them to park their car in the spot that is “plus 1” or “minus 1” from their car’s number.

9. Make Vehicles out of Shapes

Cut out triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles (or have your child do it), and then use those shapes to create vehicles. The vehicles can look like real vehicles, or your child can make up their own.

10. Visit Big Vehicles

transportation activities for preschoolersTake your preschooler to a construction site or fire station to let them observe big vehicles. What colors does your child see? How are the vehicles the same as your family car? How are they different? What sounds do the vehicles make? What features help the vehicles get their jobs done?

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Salt Lake City, thematic pretend play helps us teach reading, writing, science, social studies, and so much more. Learn about our curriculum. Call us at (801) 523-5930 for a tour.

 

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Why Your Preschooler Needs More Physical Play — Especially in the Time of Covid

preschooler physical play

Did you know that your child’s physical movement in the early years is directly  related to critical skills later in life — like reading, writing, emotional control, creativity, vocabulary skills, math, and more?

9 Movement Activities for Preschoolers You Can Do At Home

Play and movement is necessary for learning. Sometimes, we tend to view playtime and learning time as two distinct and separate tasks. One (play) is viewed as nice but just something to do when you have the time. The other (learning) is viewed as disciplined and serious.

But play is the way children learn! Play is children’s work.  When children are allowed to play, their brains get primed and ready for learning.

And perhaps never has this been more important than right now during the Covid-19 pandemic. With so much stability and activity now absent from our lives, children desperately need the physical and intellectual benefits of playful movement.

“Brain, This Is Body. Body, This Is Brain. Say Hello to Each Other.”

Your child’s brain and body are always working together, but the interesting thing is that the body actually teaches the brain.

This means that the more your preschooler moves during play, the more their brain will develop and grow.

That’s not something to be taken lightly! Children need to move and play so their brains can maximize their power!

On the outside of your child’s body, the five sense — touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing — are working to organize information coming at them.

At the same time, there is an internal stimulus going on. As your child moves, internal systems, like the kinesthetic system and vestibular system, are activated. And these strengthened systems then support the brain’s functions.

Movement actually increases your child’s cognitive and intellectual abilities.

Are You Really Right-Brained or Left-Brained?

preschooler physical play

You’ve heard of the right and left brain. The left hemisphere of the brain is in charge of processing logic, words, math, and sequence, while the right side of the brain manages rhythm, music, pictures, emotion, and intuition.

We tend to say we are either right-brained or left-brained, but the truth is that both sides of the brain are working together all the time.

And the more we access each side, the better we can function — both academically and creatively.

Now here’s the interesting thing!

Physical play is one huge element that helps to develop both sides of the brain.

In other words, the thing that will help your child’s brain to grow and develop so that it can handle academics, emotions, creativity, and logic later on?

Play!

Movement!

It’s no surprise then, that children want to move, play, climb, wiggle, crawl, jump, run, skip, hop, climb (did we already say that?), and more.

And as they do, their brains are forming the right connections to make reading, writing, math, and more possible later on.

8 Music and Movement Activities for Preschoolers

There’s More Going on Than Meets the Eye

preschooler physical play

Different movements stimulate different parts of the brain, which translates to different gains later on.

How Your Child Is Strengthening Their Brain Stem: Basic movements like grasping, crawling, walking, reaching, turning, touching, pushing, and pulling stimulate the brain stem. This leads your child to be able to develop hand-eye coordination, big motor skills, and pre-writing abilities.

Did You Know Your Child Is Working on Cerebellum Health?: Movements like spinning, balancing, listening, swinging, rolling, tumbling, and dancing stimulate the cerebellum, which is responsible for better balance, sports ability, riding a bike, writing, fine motor coordination, reading, and even typing.

Yep, Your Child’s Movements Are Improving Their Limbic System Too: Movements like cuddling, stroking, playing with others, and socializing stimulate the limbic system. That leads to emotional intelligence qualities like: love, security, social sills, cooperation, and confidence.

And a Stimulated Cortex Improves Your Child’s Life: Movements like putting puzzles together, stacking, making patterns, playing word games, and listening to music stimulate the cortex. This leads to the ability to do math and logic problems, to paint, to increase in musical ability, and to become fluent in reading and writing.

So don’t stop your child from moving! Recognize the value and strength in wiggling, climbing, running, and more.

But during Covid, when some activities are unavailable, it can be hard to find enough movement activities for your child.

Here are a few suggestions.

10 Ideas to Get Your Child Moving During Covid-19

preschooler physical play

  • Go outside where it’s green. Not only will your child enjoy the space to run and move their body, studies have found that time in green nature can improve focus.When you go outside, bring objects to encourage movement: jump ropes, kites, balls, bikes, scooters, hula hoops, and more.
  • Create obstacle courses indoors or outdoors. When coming up with the obstacles, think: What can your child climb through, climb over, or climb under? Can your child hop over something? What can your child do on one foot? Can your child do something backwards? What can your child balance on? What can your child carry?

  • Look online for movement videos: Cosmic Kids Yoga and Go Noodle are popular ones with many children.
  • Turn on music and dance.

  • Do chores. Weeding, cleaning bathrooms, folding laundry, picking up toys and more all require movement. (This may take some creativity to make it fun, but it can be done!)

  • Do the hokey pokey.

  • Play hot lava.
  • Time how long it takes to ride bikes to a certain point. Then time how long it takes to run, to walk, to skip, and more. Turn this into a scientific experiment by making a hypothesis and charting your data.
  • Set a timer for one minute, and do as many squats/jumping jacks/push-ups/favorite exercise as you can. Do it again with another exercise.
  • Allow for free play. While your child will benefit from structured play, they also need time to move their bodies in ways that feel good to them. Free play lets them combine their creativity with their environment in ways that test their bodies.

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Draper, Utah, we incorporate creative movement, dance, and play into every single day. To learn more about how we promote physical development at preschool, contact us online or give us a call at (801) 523-5930.

 

 

Written by Rebecca Brown Wright