Transportation Play- numeracy & sorting skills

Today we read Donald Crew’s picture book, Freight Train. It’s a perfect book for preschoolers of different ages and stages. Sadie loved the bright colorful train cars and Macie Jane really liked learning about the different types of train cars. We used the book as inspiration for our numeracy play today.

We used a printable in the transportation unit along with a sentence strip but a long piece of construction paper would suit just as well. I cut the train cars out for this activity because I wanted Macie Jane focus more counting than cutting (although it wouldn’t be bad for her to do both- we were limited on time too.) I glued the engine car at the end of the sentence strip and reviewed left to right progression. (We count/write from left to right.) Then I let her independently order the cars. She got most of them in order but had a few mixed up. We reviewed number order together and she glued the cars on to the sentence strip. 

This activity serves as a great anchor. I put it up over our calendar area and I’ll plan to use it as a reference for future activities as well as for daily review. 

Our next activity was a sorting activity. These are so fun for both girls in their respective stages of development in preschool. 

Macie Jane is getting really good at using scissors while Sadie still just has a great time cutting everything into bits- nothing wrong with that. 🙂 After the various forms of transportation were cut out in one piece I let the girls sort them according to where they travel, land water, or in the sky. It was a hit and the gluing portion was equally engaging as the cutting part was! 🙂    

Want to see more of our fun? Keep up with us on Instagram and Facebook! Stay tuned for more transportation fun this week and next!