Sanity Savers- Find a Truck Edition: Create Your Own Town

By Jacalyn Slingerland
Play to Learn Facilitator  

Sponsored by: Dunn Tire

Materials:

Cardboard box, markers, crayons, tape, scissors, toy cars.  

Length:

Set up: 10-15 minutes
Activity: 20-30 minutes

Have fun by creating your own map for your toy trucks! All you need is a little creativity, a box, and basic art supplies. Children will be able to use their fine motor skills to create their town and drive their toy trucks around! This is a great activity to practice lefts and rights, coloring, and shapes. One may also discuss communities, services, and jobs!   

Sanity Savers- Find a Truck Edition: Create Your Own Town

Directions: 

Step 1: Find an old cardboard box and break it down, using scissors can help.  

Step 2: Tape the cardboard together as needed and so that it is flat. Tape the back so you can color on the front, markers and crayons will not work well on tape.  
Step 3: Flip it over and decorate the front! You can draw roads, plants, houses, and community buildings. (hospitals, fire stations, parks, etc.).    
Step 4: Play!  You can put your town away when your done playing and reuse it another day.  With more boxes and tape, you can expand your map! Have fun! 

Vocabulary Words 

Community – a group of people living or working together in the same area.  Fine motor skills– coordination between small muscles. Examples: coloring, writing, playing with small toys.  

Check out our other Sanity Savers posts here! 

Storytime – Find a Truck Edition: Ghostbusters 716 read Little Blue Truck

Sponsored by: Savarino Companies

Storytime – Find a Truck Edition: Ghostbusters 716 read Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle. “Neigh!” said a horse. “Quack!” said a duck. “Beep!” said the friendly Little Blue Truck. Little Blue Truck is a joyful cacophony of animal and truck sounds that will have youngsters beeping and quacking—and begging for one more go-round! Visit exploreandmore.org for more Storytime stories!

For more Storytime stories click here!

Sanity Savers – Find a Truck Edition: Fire Truck Sanity Saver

Written by: Will Kawalec
Lead Play to Learn Facilitator   

Sponsored by: Dunn Tire

Materials:

Juice/Milk Carton
4 bottle caps (for wheels)
4 Plastic straws
Red Paint
Construction paper
Glue
Tape
Markers 

Sanity Savers - Find A Truck Edition: Fire Truck Sanity Saver

Length:

Set up: 2 Minutes
Activity 10-25 Minutes
Inactive: 20-30 minutes drying time 

Academic Subject(s):

Art, Design  

Directions:

Step 1: Lay down some newspaper or old magazines for your workspace and gather all of your materials!
Step 2: Begin by removing the plastic cap of the carton. Cut out a rectangle half the length of the carton on only one side of the carton.  This will be the top of the fire truck. Paint the remaining carton RED. Grown-ups your little ones might need a little help with these steps.
Step 3: While the paint is drying, begin planning out the next steps of your fire truck – building the ladder!
Step 4: To assemble your ladder you will need your four straws. Keep two of the straws the same length, laying them out on your workspace parallel to one another.   Cut the second two straws into thirds, leaving you with 6 equal pieces. Glue the 6 pieces evenly apart between the two parallel full straws. This will create 6 steps to you ladder!
Step 5: Once your carton is completely dry, attach the ladder to the back of your fire truck.
Step 6: With glue connect the bottle caps to the side of the truck these will be the wheels.
Step 7: Now it is time to design your truck! You can add windows, icons or whatever else you can imagine! You can draw these directly on the truck or on a separate piece of paper and glue your decorations to the carton.   
Step 8: Play with the newly created truck!            

Check out our other Sanity Savers posts here! 

Sanity Savers – Find a Truck Edition: Counting Dump Truck

Sponsored by: Dunn Tire

By: Valerie Drapeau     
Education Coordinator

Download printable directions here!

Materials:

Dump Truck coloring page (print out)
White piece of copy paper
Crayons or colored pencils
Pencil or Marker
Ruler
Scissors
Blocks or Legos

Length:

Set up: 15 minutes
Activity: 20-30 minutes

Academic Subject(s):

Math and Art

In today’s Sanity Saver we will be featuring a dump truck and working on some early math skills!  In this activity your child will practice number writing and counting, all while having fun filling up their truck and dumping their blocks!  They can even color their dump truck to customize it.  We hope you will join us on Saturday, June 27th for the “Find-A-Truck” event in Buffalo as well!

Directions:

Step 1: Print out the Dump Truck coloring page.  Encourage your child to customize their truck in whatever colors they would like!
Step 2: Take your additional sheet of white paper and start folding about a 2-inch section.  Continue to flip over and fold four more times until you have one strip.  Using a ruler, pencil and child safe scissors, have your child measure and cut that strip into four equal parts.  Parents remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect!  This is a great learning opportunity for your child to work with a ruler, as well as work on basic math skills with how to make parts out of a whole.
Step 3: Open each strip part (it should look like an accordion) and have your child practice cutting apart each fold line to create small squares.  You should have 20 pieces of paper when finished cutting.  These pieces will be for your numbers!

Step 4: Starting with the number 1, have your child use a pencil or marker to write the numbers 1-20 on the slips of paper.  This is great opportunity to practice proper number writing…make sure those 6’s and 9’s are the correct direction for instance!  For younger children, you could write the numbers and have them practice tracing what you wrote.  This activity is also great for practicing number recognition!
Step 5: Mix up the numbers and select one number square at a time to place on the truck.  Your child will then “fill up” the truck with the correct number of blocks.  Let them “dump” the blocks when they’re ready to try the next number!


Check out our other Sanity Savers with awesome truck activities for your child to try this week!

Vocabulary Words:

Number Recognition: the ability to visually recognize and name numbers.  How to practice it: point out and name numbers on street signs, houses and buildings while you are out and about. 
Part-Part-Whole Math Concept: is a ratio or a fraction that represents a relationship between a part and its whole.

Check out our other Sanity Savers posts here! 

Field trips are back! Please be aware that it will be busier than usual.