Welcome to the classroom! We love to play, learn, create and sing together in the classroom, and we’d like to encourage our classroom friends to keep learning and playing at home once Caitie’s Classroom is over. We’ve put together activities and resources so the playing, learning, creating and singing doesn’t have to stop once Caitie says goodbye. Try these out at home or in your own classroom, and have fun!
In this episode we are exploring building and construction trucks! We specifically talk about and explore dump trucks, excavators, and bulldozers – some of our favorites! Get out your toy trucks and blocks, there are lots of things we can build when we work together! Read on for tips and ideas on how to recreate the activities from the classroom at home and how to build off them for more fun and learning!
Make Your Own Recycled Blocks!
You can make your very own building blocks with items you might find in your recycling bin!
- Our blocks that you see at the beginning of the episode are made from cardboard tunes. You can find all the instructions on how to make them here: https://supersimple.com/article/make-your-own-recycled-blocks/
- You can also use leftover cardboard boxes and other recycled items to make really big towers!
- Try putting different items out for your little one and let their imaginations go wild as they pretend to be construction workers!
Exploring Construction Trucks
We explore dump trucks, excavators, and bulldozers in this episode! Caitie explains what each truck does and then we move as we pretend to be the different trucks.
- Pretend to be the different trucks and move along with Caitie!
- When you see different trucks when you are out and about or maybe in television or movies, try to identify them and move like them.
- If you enjoy guessing what each item is in our Turn and Learn style, you can find a bunch of Turn and Learn videos here!
Construction Truck Discovery Bin
Excavators dig big holes! We bring out our toy excavator to play in the discovery bin! You can make your own construction site discovery bin at home.
- Put some sensory material into a bin, along with some other items. We used colored wooden blocks, but you can use anything at all that will fit in the bin. Try putting in some of your little one’s favorite toys to dig and discovery, or try putting in plastic letters or numbers for some letter and number practice. Bring out an excavator toy and dig in the bin to discover the items. If you don’t have a toy excavator, try giving your little ones a spoon and pretend it is the bucket part of the excavator. Have them use the spoon to dig in the bin! Be sure to put all the items you find aside so you can play with them later.
- Try an edible construction site sensory bin! Find all the details as well as some great learning prompts here: https://supersimple.com/article/edible-construction-sensory-bin/
Building Blocks
Once we have dug out all the building blocks, we use a dump truck to take them to our construction site, and a bulldozer to push them all to one side so we can start building. Our wooden blocks are simple wooden cubes that we purchased at a hardware store, and dyed different colors. You can use any kind of colored blocks, or plain blocks too! Here are some ideas for building with blocks for more learning and fun.
- See how tall you can build a single tower. Count the blocks as you go until they topple over.
- Practice colors by naming the colors of the blocks as you build a tower.
- Pick a color and have your little one make a tower of one solid color.
- Pretend to be the leader on a construction site and give instructions on how tall and what color a tower should be. For example, say a green tower five blocks high! And have your little one be the construction worker building the tower. Your little one might also like to be the construction leader and give directions for what towers to build. If they do, have them play the building inspector and check your work to make sure it is built correctly. Then they get more color and counting practice too!
- Try writing letters on your building blocks, and have your little one make towers with certain letters. Try making big towers with uppercase letters and small towers with lowercase letters.
- Try building words with your blocks, putting the blocks in order to spell certain words.
- Encourage your little one to build a whole city! Think about the different buildings that are in your town and make a tower for each one. When the city is finished, give it a special name.
- You can also try picking a theme or name for your city, and then build around that idea. It can be anything at all, and see what your little one comes up with to build it.
- When you are building the towers, explore using vocabulary words like tall, short, big and small. You can also explore opposites by making different kinds of towers next to each other.
Make Your Own Construction Trucks!
For our craft, we made our own moving paper dump truck! You can make your own too at home with our step by step instructions: Dump Truck Craft! You can make an excavator craft too and have a bunch of construction vehicles to help build on your construction site!
We hope you have fun singing, playing, learning, and creating! We love to see photos of our friends having fun in the classroom and of their wonderful creations! You can share them with us through social media or by sending us an email to hello@SuperSimpleOnline.com.
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