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Learning Shapes With Toy Cars

March 15, 2016 by Emma Edwards 10 Comments

The manipulative for this weeks #ToolsForLearning is small toys. I couldn’t resist making a play activity based on Adam’s favourite small toy of all time – the toy car! As we have very few shape adventures I decided to create a Learning Shapes With Toy Cars activity.

Learning Shapes With Toy Cars

(This post contains affiliate links)

Regular readers will know we have a car track obsession. So far our tracks have included a masking tape car track that filled the living room, a DIY track busy bag that we can take out and about, a giant car track for the garden and even one for the seaside.

DIY sandpaper road tracks

Our shape road tracks are made from wet and dry sandpaper. I used one piece of A4 sized sandpaper per shape. I used objects from around the house to use as large shape templates. I then found similar smaller sized shapes to draw around in order to cut out the middle of the shape. Finally I cut white electrical tape into small strips and added these as road markings in the middle of the road. I managed to find objects to draw around for the circle, square, triangle and rectangle. However, I struggled to find anything for a pentagon or octagon. I attempted to draw them independently but didn’t manage it. Luckily Twinkl came to the rescue. I printed their 2D Shape A4 Cut Outs and used these to make the pentagon and octagon roads.

Ways to play with toy cars

I laid the 6 shape road tracks on the floor. Adam couldn’t wait to start playing. He couldn’t believe it that the road tracks were slightly rough due to being made from sandpaper. This added an additional sensory element to the activity.

Teaching children about shapes using cars

Over the next few hours we created several different ways to play with our shape road tracks. Here are a few ideas:

* Drive the cars along the roads and count how many corners each shape has. Identify the shape names.

* See how many cars can fit on each shape. Which one has the most cars on? This is a great activity for spacial awareness to identify the correct sized cars to fit along each road.

Making shapes with cars

* Use the cars to create your own shaped road on the carpet.

* How many cars are needed to fill the inside of each shape.

* Place the emergency vehicles on one shape.

* Can you find any squares in the living room that look like your road track?

* Place all the yellow cars on one shape and all the blue cars on another.

Colour sorting with cars

Throughout the activity Adam used mathematical language to name the shapes and their properties without even realising. To him he was just excited he had some more road tracks to play with. I have a feeling our learning shapes with toy cars road tracks will be played with for many hours.

Learning with small toys

Check out these Small Toy activities as part of the #toolsforlearning series:

Car Parking Lot Preschool Math Grid Game from Life Over C’s

Alphabet Car Wash from Learning 2 Walk

Sorting and Counting with Die-Cast Trains from Crafty Mama in ME

Directionality Activity with Small Cars from Teach Me Mommy

Forest Animals Letter Sounds Activity from Stir the Wonder

What Makes Ice Melt Fastest from Raising Little Superheroes

Fun DIY Phonics Game from Mum in the Madhouse

What Do Animals Eat? Classification Activity from Schooling a Monkey

Color Mixing with Toy Cars from The Kindergarten Connection

AM and PM Time Telling with Shopkins from Sugar Aunts

Sorting Animals Venn Diagram Activity from Mom Inspired Life

Hands-on Way to Learn Letter Sounds from School Time Snippets

Fairies & STEM Activities: Gardening with Kids from Edventures with Kids

Name & Letter Practice: A Painting With Toy Car Activity from Play Dough & Popsicles

Learning Letters & Reading With Cars! from Preschool Powol Packets

Shopkins Sorting from Still Playing School

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Filed Under: Independent Play Activity, Learning Activities, Play Activities, Popular Posts, Some time required Tagged With: Busy Bag Play Activities, Cupboard Resources, DIY activities, Independent Play Activities, Non-messy activity, Shapes, Toddler play, Transport activity

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jen says

    March 15, 2016 at 11:46 am

    I love how accessible this is. It is such a fun activity and doesn’t every child love cars!

    Reply
  2. My Bored Toddler says

    March 24, 2016 at 10:22 pm

    My kids would love this! Fantastic!

    Reply
  3. Sarah Doyle - let them be small says

    April 23, 2016 at 7:03 pm

    such a great idea. Weirdly we don’t have many toy cars at home, I will have to try and pick up a load as this is a great idea x
    #letslearn

    Reply
  4. Leandra says

    May 12, 2016 at 3:38 pm

    Such a clever and simple activity, I’m sure T would love this too! Thanks so much for joining in with #letslearn I’m sorry it’s taken so long to comment. X

    Reply
  5. Deebi27 says

    July 16, 2016 at 7:45 pm

    What a fabulous idea! I am think about using black foam and mount on heavier card stock for durability. I can see this being use a lot! I have 2 grandsons (2 yrs and 1) and I can assure you I will be making these for them! Thanks for your creativity!

    Reply
  6. Ilinca says

    September 25, 2016 at 6:03 am

    I love this idea! I know some of the kids in my group will be very excited when I’ll show them the shapes. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Emma Edwards says

      September 26, 2016 at 9:37 am

      So pleased you love it. Many months later and the shapes are still going strong in our house!

      Reply
  7. Donna says

    March 21, 2017 at 1:54 am

    What a great idea. My little guy would love this. Is there a reason you used wet and dry sand paper as opposed to just regular?

    Reply
    • Emma Edwards says

      March 21, 2017 at 1:30 pm

      Thank you. Absolutely no reason – other than that was what was available in PoundLand!

      Reply
  8. Donna says

    April 19, 2017 at 5:47 pm

    I will have to get sandpaper on my break this afternoon to make this over the weekend. I have Creative Memories Cutter set with all the different shapes so that should solve shape problem. Wish all these ideas were in a book form to make it easier to save them all. I love all these ideas and having trouble keeping up with the e-mails with them all.

    Reply

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Welcome!

Emma and Adam

During a difficult pregnancy suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) Emma vowed to make every day an adventure once she had recovered. Adventures of Adam is the outcome of completing a 100 day play challenge with Adam as part of that promise. Emma has a section dedicated to HG friendly play activities so that Mums can still be part of their children’s play whilst they are ill.

To learn more about Emma and Adam click here.


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