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.
