Books
We began our C is for Car week with a trip to the library, to borrow books about cars. Our very favorite is If I Built A Car by Chris Van Dusen. What an imaginative story, and the rhyming text was sweet and fun.
Learning Shapes
1+1+1=1 has a fun printable packet about Disney Pixar's Cars, a movie that Little M&M is just in love with. So I printed out the matching game to help him review his shapes.
We glued it into a file folder, and returned to it multiple times throughout the week. He's really getting the hang of these, and loves the accomplishment of matching them all up!
Magnetic Pom Poms
For some letter recognition and fine motor practice, we printed out a letter C from Shannon's Tot School and slipped it into a plastic sheet protector. We pulled out the magnetic pom poms and a baking sheet, and he got right to work!
Leap Frog Fridge Phonics
This used to be how we introduced each letter during Honey Pot's alphabet units. Today we pulled it out for review, as Little M&M learned A and B before our long Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas themes! He listened to each ditty about A, B and C.
Then I asked him, "Which is C?" and so on.
Mega Block Puzzles
We LOVED this activity during our Valentine's Day theme last year! So I used the same template and created some car puzzles for Little M&M.
There were some familiar faces, such as Lightning McQueen and Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. And I also created a big letter C puzzle for him. He loved these and did them often throughout the week.
Letter C Roads
I had these filed away since Honey Pot's Letter C Unit almost three years ago!
We pulled out our little cars that we bring on road trips, and we drove them around the C's.
Eventually he even made a racetrack!
"Car'd" Game
This idea and printable comes from the amazing Toddler Approved! I gathered a few of Little M&M's cars in various colors, and we tried to follow the pattern cards.
Honey Pot helped too. She was awesome at it.
Little M&M struggled with placement but always grabbed the right color.
Afterward I asked them to work together to try to build a big letter C out of all of the cars!
Pattern Blocks
I printed out two templates for our pattern blocks: the upper/lowercase C's and a car. We love these puzzles, and I love finding so many free templates on Pinterest!
He said, "Do it with me," so I placed a few pieces and helped to straighten them out so he wouldn't get frustrated while he worked.
Car Lacing
I picked up this fun transportation lacing set from the Dollar Spot at Target at Christmastime. So I pulled out the car one, and let him do a little bit of lacing today. We've done this without a "kit" before though...just print any image onto cardstock, punch holes around it, and have the kids thread yarn (with one end of it taped) through it.
Scavenger Hunt and Review
I started gathering various letters we had around the house, and came up with this activity for review. I placed A's, B's and C's in a container with paper shreds. Little M&M had to first find them, then sort them by letter.
We used playdough cookie cutters, blocks, fridge magnets and AlphaBots. When he found one, I would ask, "What letter did you find?" Sometimes he knew it, and othertimes I helped him. The repetition of saying their names is wonderful!
For final review, after all had been found, I asked him, "Where are the C's?" and so forth.
Playdough Fun
We do this during most of our units. Today we made a fresh batch of playdough, and made some C's and cars.
Honey Pot added eyes to her cars!
C is for cupcake too, so Honey Pot extended her play with these cupcake liners that we also keep with our playdough stash.
Monster C's!
And I have various playdough mats with our stash as well. Today we pulled out the car one, and Little M&M added wheels with playdough and buttons.
Honey Pot has been working on beginning sounds and spelling. So she pulled out another playdough mat and put candles on the cake, which she discovered also start with C!
Car Bath
Stir the Wonder had a great idea to make bath-time extra special. I cut out some roads from black foam, and drew white lines on them with crayon. This was the set-up I created before bath-time:
It also contained four cars, and two stop signs that I cut out from red foam. Little M&M loves pointing out all stop signs while we're driving!
After the initial drive across my track, the kids pulled the roads down and built their own tracks!
This race track entertained Honey Pot for a long time!
In the end, this inevitably happened. But the novelty of playing with cars in the bathtub was a huge hit! Honey Pot in particular stayed in here for a long time!
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