Perfect for preschool and kindergarten aged children, these transport themed number printables invite purposeful play following children's interests.
Playing with trucks and cars is a favourite of many, some might even say rite of childhood. A classic for very good reason. I had kept my old Matchbox cars and now my three girls have enjoyed playing with them as much as I did then I was their age.
Forever the teacher, I'm always on the look out for ways to incorporate learning into children's play. Gentle ways to encourage children to explore new materials and new (to them) concepts.
Knowing how much my own children enjoyed the sandpit and playing pretend with their trucks, I created these construction themed number mats for play at preschool.
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These simple number mats each have a truck and a different number already printed on them so all you need to do is add some loose parts - some small stones, blocks, sticks, for your preschooler to count out to match the number.
After making this set, it quickly became one of our busiest centres at preschool!
Children who had found it difficult to engage in these sort of invitations preferring to play outside where amongst the biggest fans. Seeing this, I then created a slightly different set of mats and used number cards or 'work orders' to invite further play.
The 'work orders' also helped encourage some co-operative play as the children then needed to check off each other's orders to make sure they had counted out the correct amount.
It was a great exercise in 1:1 correspondence and introduced ten frames as an efficient way of organising amounts to make them easier to count.
A couple of weeks later we took just these 'work orders' outside to the sandpit, added some helmets and some toy trucks = whole day of purposeful play.
We also had some children ready to count beyond 10 so I then added in these additional 'work orders' to 30. Just changing the materials over kept this invitation fresh and inviting.
Any loose parts that you can imagine be loaded up into the back of a truck can be used. This week it was wooden blocks and craft sticks, last week it was rocks. Next week might be DUPLO or LEGO blocks.
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