Things that move and little fingers that love to move go perfectly together during a transportation theme. Let your preschoolers explore different types of transportation while working on those fine motor skills. They’ll punch train tickets and build tunnels, bridges, roads, and ramps as they zoom to transportation activities preschool students love.
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Transportation Lesson Plans
exploring ramps
Transportation Activities Preschool Students Love
I don’t think it matters which generation you belong to – Baby Boomers, Millennials, and Gen-Zs have all played with toy cars and ramps.
It’s a timeless activity incorporating fine motor skills into your transportation theme.
Just use a long piece of wood and gather some cars. When we did this activity, we explored this ramp at different heights using stairs.
Not only does this activity get the cars’ wheels spinning, but it also spins the wheels in your toddlers’ heads as they think of where to set up the ramp next!
Materials:
- toy cars
- Melissa & Doug vehicles
- cardboard or wood
- Optional: road tape
- box, shelf, or stairs
Building Roads
Transportation Activity for Kids
Flashback to the time when I had only one kid and no blog – when I had time to create mathematically perfect felt road pieces with yellow felt dashes.
Those days may be long gone, but I wouldn’t trade them for the world!
Your toddlers won’t care if the pieces are mathematically perfect anyways. They will just want something to drive their toy cars on!
Use felt pieces or road tape that your toddlers can assemble into roads. Once they set them up, they will be off to the races!
Materials:
- black & yellow stiff felt
- road tape
- Melissa & Doug vehicles
- Melissa & Doug town set
Exploring Tunnels
Transportation Activity
This activity reminds me of the good old days of playing Mario Kart. On a Nintendo 64 or GameCube,… technology that kids these days have never even heard of!
One of my favorite things about Mario Kart was the different courses. Some had ice; others had sand traps and bridges. That’s what made it challenging and engaging.
Create a new level of excitement with this wooden rainbow that cars can race through. Let your toddlers set it up, and then be off to the races! There aren’t any banana peels to cause you to spin out either!
Don’t have a wooden rainbow? Just tape pieces of paper into tunnels on the floor and then send the cars zooming on through!
Materials:
Building Bridges
Transportation STEM
Get those minds racing as they look at and sort photographs of different types of bridges.
Then, invite your preschoolers to use cups, popsicle sticks, blocks, paper, pipe cleaners, or a geometry set to create their very own bridges! (This set includes photographs of each bridge made from a geometry set.)
They can use the included bridge design sheet to plan their bridge and record their bridge’s design and measurements.
Talk about a fun way to bridge fine motor skills and STEM during your transportation unit.
Materials:
- Bridge STEM Activity
- geometry set
- STEM materials such as cups, Legos, popsicle sticks, etc.
Train Tickets
Transportation Fine Motor Activity
I’ve been on plenty of train rides. There was a 12-hour trip to Omaha with my sister, a ride on the Royal Gorge train with my hubby, and a train ride back to Vicenza, Italy (where I was born).
But none of these train rides included a conductor that punched my train ticket. Talk about childhood dreams shattered.
If you’ve seen the Polar Express, you definitely know what I mean. I was hoping for a secret motivational word on each of these rides, or at least a single punch.
Well, there’s good news for your little ones: their train tickets will get punched!
Not only will they get their ticket punched, fulfilling that inner wish created from the Polar Express, but they‘ll get to pretend to be the conductor and punch holes in these printable train tickets.
Every time they punch a hole in the ticket, your preschoolers will be working on number identification, one-to-one counting as they punch each hole, and fine motor skills!
The utmost satisfaction of a punched train ticket tugs them into this train math activity every time.
Materials:
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MORE Transportation Activities for Preschoolers
Each of these fine motor activities will keep your toddlers busy and engaged as they explore different types of transportation. Setting up these opportunities to play will reinforce your little learners’ imaginations and incorporate fine motor skills during your transportation unit! Get your transportation activities preschool kids will love planned today!
