With these ten activities, students will learn all about how people and products get from place to place.
By Andrea Mulder-Slater
With these ten activities, students will learn all about how people and products get from place to place.
This lesson idea that can be carried on through many sessions. The idea is to introduce and discuss different modes of transportation and in the end, create one or more transportation artifacts.
Vocabulary:
water, air, land, boats, cars, automobiles, ships, sailing, walking, movement, bicycle, sled, canoe, airplane, truck, schoolbus, skateboard, skates, airport, vehicles, driver, pilot, captain, traffic light, horn, windshield wipers, safety belts, steering wheel, trains, fuel, gas, tires, dump truck, pick-up truck, station-wagon, sports car, garage, tractors
Discussion/Field Trips:
Discuss different modes of transportation on land, sea and in the air. Talk about how people get to where they are going (school bus, ferry boat, car etc.) Incorporate field trips wherever possible. Take a trip on a school bus, walk around the school parking lot to look at cars, visit the airport, bus station or train station. Watch videos that show different forms of transportation. Look at travel magazines. Ask if anyone has been on a plane … a train … a horse … etc. Ask how students get to school everyday. How do kids in other countries travel? Leave lots of time for discussion. Make sure to review safety rules (seat belts in cars, obeying traffic signals, walk and don’t walk signs). Don’t forget to discuss how products are delivered … couriers with trucks, airplanes etc. How does the mail travel?
Activities:
BULLETIN BOARD ACTIVITY: Students can collect images of different types of transportation and add them to a bulletin board that has been divided into Land, Sea and Air.
TRANSPORTATION MURAL: Students can work together to create a transportation mural (one for land, one for sea and one for air).
SOUND PICTURES: What sounds do the various modes of transportation make? (train whistle, truck horn, police car siren) How would these sounds appear if we were to draw them? Provide crayons and paper for students to experiment with the colors and shapes of transportation sounds.
TOY CAR PRINTMAKING: Using old toy cars and tempera paint, allow students to dip the cars into paint and “drive” them across paper to see what kinds of marks the tires make.
LICENSE PLATE RUBBINGS: Using old license plates (or plate on cars in the parking lot) allow students to do rubbings of the plates. Provide paper and crayons for the rubbings.
SHAPE VEHICLES: See how many types of transportation vehicles can be created using the basic geometric shapes (triangles, squares, circles, rectangles). Have students cut their shapes out of construction paper and arrange them to create vehicles.
PAPER BOATS: Make paper boats using the directions found HERE. Decorate them with bright crayon colors.
PAPER AIRPLANES: Make paper airplanes. Decorate them with bright crayon colors.
TRANSPORTATION MOBILE:
What You Need:
String or yarn; coat hangers; thick paper; paint; brushes; scissors; hole punch; markers or crayons
What You Do:
After discussing how people and products get from place to place, students can create drawings and paintings of various modes of transportation on thick paper. The pictures can be painted or decorated with markers or crayons. Once complete, the pictures can be cut out and put together in a mobile … by punching holes in the pictures and hanging them from a coat hanger that has been wrapped with yarn or raffia. **Have your students write facts on the back of each of their modes of transportation. (ie trucks deliver newspapers; people travel on airplanes etc.)
TAKE A TRIP ON A ZEBRA: Have students consider what life would be like without cars or trucks. What if we traveled by riding animals? Not just any animals: elephants, zebras, tigers, ducks etc. Students can draw or paint their ideas on paper.
Recommended Books:
Image: René Blankenstein, FreeImages.com
