“Land, water or air! The meaning of transportation or the means of transport meaning is basically the way to move from one place to another. Buses, boats, trains and aeroplanes are the most common means of transport that children have heard of, which can help people move from one part of the world to another. Learning about all these modes of transportation is one of the first things children can do when they start communicating with their families.”
Angela Naik, Writer at FirstCry
Kids in kindergarten have a fascination with anything that moves – be it a bulky tractor or a svelte racing car. Perhaps it’s on account of the unusual shapes and sizes different vehicles come in. In any case, it’s a great idea to leverage that inherent fascination into something of greater significance – namely, learning all about how transportation works.
15 Amazing Transportation Activities for Kindergarten
Discovering various modes of transportation for kindergarten can be fun with interesting activities. Here’s a look at some of the most novel transportation activity ideas that will help set the ball rolling when it comes to teaching your kids all about transportation.
- Model Railways
- Paint and Mould Tracks
- Water Tray Boating
- Counting Vehicles
- Land, Air or Sea?
- Flying Planes
- Creating Road Signs
- Traffic Light Cookie Baking
- Parking Lot Alphabet Fun
- Fruit and Veggie Wheels
- Sidewalk Maze
- Magic Carpet Books
- Airport Runway
- Red Light, Green Light
- Old and New Transport
- Car Ramps
- Build a Boat STEM Challenge
- Create your Own Road Map
- Bus Stop – Addition and Subtraction
- Transportation Sensory Bin
Model railways is one of the amusing transportation games for kindergarten kids. Kids are forever fascinated with trains. Here’s one of those transportation activities that will put them firmly in that engine driver’s seat!
The activity: Get that model train set out. As the children figure out how to fit pieces of the track together, they develop their cognitive skills.
Bonus: Children can enact scenarios of the world around them.
Seeking an activity for transportation that’s messy? Try this one. Paint and Mould Tracks is one of the artsy transportation games for kindergarten kids. Your kids will love this!
The activity: Ask your children to dip their plastic vehicles into paint before wheeling them across sheets of paper with a view to creating some really cool tracks. Alternately, flatten some playdough and have your child run their vehicle over it to create some pretty distinct tracks.
Transportation activities in water? Aye, aye, captain!
The activity: Take a water tray and fill it with water. This is the time to set that collection of toy boats to good use. If you don’t have those, create boats out of Lego – or paper, too!
Did you know that providing activities related to transportation for kindergarten kids improves their understanding of the world?
Teaching transportation to kids while improving their maths skills, too? You bet! Counting Vehicles is a transportation game for kindergarten kids that will also improve their mathematical skills.
The activity: When you’re on the road in your car with your preschooler, have them count as many vehicles as possible of a particular kind: like taxis or even planes in the sky!
Transportation activities like this one teach kids about more than just transportation. In this case, sorting!
The activity: Place 3 hoops alongside each other. Then take an assortment of paper cutouts of different vehicles and ask your child to sort them into hoops labelled ‘land’, ‘air’ and ‘sea’.
Looks like there might be some turbulence! Nothing our little pilots can’t handle. One of the coolest transportation activities for kindergarten, is this one.
The activity: Help your little one create planes using various materials like paper, cardboard and even foam sheets. Try flying each one and see what improvement in design can be made to get them to fly better.
Transportation activities just got a whole lot more realistic!
The activity: Kids have to create their own road signs. This activity goes a long way in helping them enhance their motor skills. Take this to the next level by having them incorporate the different shapes commonly found in road signs, thus incorporating a mathematical component in this fine activity, too.
Did you know that learning about transportation for kindergarten kids can be both fun and educational?
Traffic light cookie baking is the yummiest vehicle activity for kindergarten kids. Another of those ‘on the road’ transportation activities.
The activity: The objective is simple: bake cookies in three colours: red, yellow, and green. When done, assemble them to resemble a traffic light signal and then educate your kid about how vehicles need to proceed in accordance (eg. stop at red).
Tip: Looking to cut back on their sugar? Use crackers with appropriately coloured cream cheese!
Parking lot alphabet is one of the educational vehicle activities for kindergarten kids. This really cool activity for transport helps kids learn the alphabet, too.
The activity: Take a large sheet of paper that has parking lots drawn on it labelled in uppercase letters of the alphabet. Kids have to take the cars labelled with matching lowercase letters and put them in the appropriate parking spots.
Transportation activities like this one stimulate the imaginations of children. Fruit and veggie wheels is one of the healthy transport activities for your kids.
The activity: Give your child a plastic knife and have them cut out ‘wheels’ from food items like bananas, oranges and even zucchini! They can then pair these with the ‘body’ in the form of crackers or breads, to form the complete vehicle.
Kids love puzzles, and what better puzzle than a maze? Surely one of the best preschool transport activities!
The activity: Draw a maze on a sidewalk and challenge your child to get their toy car out of it. You can make this even more challenging in future, by creating a larger maze and having them ‘cycle’ their way out of it.
Magic carpet books are an interesting transport activity for children. Books are a truly amazing way of transporting your preschooler to another world.
The activity: Choose books that are focused on transportation activities. If your child finds themselves on a space rocket going to the moon, or perhaps in a submarine several thousand leagues under the sea, it will propel their love of learning about transportation to another level.
Airport runway is one of the amusing transport activities for kids. Time to get into the air again, captain!
The activity: Create your own airport on a large sheet of paper, replete with runway lights and the runway (simply draw them). Explain to your child how the plane takes off and lands.
Tip: Throw in some toy buses, and perhaps some Lego people, too.
Probably the most fun way to teach your kids about traffic signals.
The activity: Your kids have to run when you say ‘Green Light’, and stop at ‘Red Light’. ‘Yellow Light’ means, go slow. This, until that finish line is reached, of course.
Note: You might want to take this outdoors for more space.
Show your kids how transport was, compared to how it is today.
The activity: Simply open your laptop and show them fascinating images of transport in days gone by.
Additional Kindergarten Transportation Activities
Can’t get enough of the cool transportation activities outlined above? Here’s presenting some more, to get those little minds ‘racing’!
Getting cars to slide down a car ramp, will have those kids scream in delight!
The activity: Make a simple car ramp out of a flattened cardboard box. Draw a road down the middle, then prop it onto a sofa and have your child let their toy cars slide down them.
Make this exercise fun for your children, by telling them that the only way the Princess can be rescued, is by getting her across the ‘moat’ in a ‘boat’!
The activity: Using simple materials in a STEM kit that can be ordered online, create a boat that is complete with Mast and Sail. Then take it in a bathtub or even a kiddie pool, and help the princess get across safely!
All kids love exploring maps. Imagine the fun, when they move across a map on the floor!
The activity: Use some painter’s tape to create a simple map on the floor. Then have your child navigate their way to their destinations, as they crawl along with their favourite toy cars!
This fun game that you can buy off the Internet, is a great way to teach those young minds concepts like Addition and Subtraction.
The activity: In this board game, children will find themselves picking up and dropping off passengers. The player that has the greatest number of passengers when they reach the bus stop, is the winner.
Kids will have a fun, ‘tactile’ experience with this cool activity!
The activity: Make a transportation sensory bin by taking a shoe box and filling it with rice or even beans. Then let them have fun moving their toy cars and trucks through it, simulating the friction experienced by tyres on the road.
Conclusion
Kindergarten kids are fascinated with anything that moves, which is why it is the right time to introduce them to means of transportation. In this article, we have provided 15 unique transportation activities for your kids. Which one is your favourite? Do share your thoughts.
While the act of moving in general is interesting, it can be even more interesting for your young preschooler, when you introduce them to the various transportation activities that have been enlisted here. Time to get in the driver’s seat and get started with doing exactly that.
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