To pique the students interest in today's topic we learned a really catchy song "Daddy's Rusty Car" found at http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/transportation/m-songs-rusty-car.htm. After a short discussion about how we can get from one place to another we talked about how the students got to school. Did they walk, ride a bus, or ride in a car (correction a van)? Today's weather was beautiful, so we took advantage of the warm sunshine to take a close look at a car.
My car was the only model we had available to us. We drew a rough sketch of my car, counting the number of doors, wheels, mirrors, windows, lights, and key holes/door locks. They really took notice of the door locks, since most cars today have a remote clicker to unlock the doors, they were curious about the purpose of the door locks.
With our sketches done in great detail (we added labels of the major parts after the pictures were taken), we went back inside to explore more cars (matchbox cars). My sons have quite a collection of matchbox vehicles, felt roads, felt city blocks, and traffic signs.
We sorted the vehicles into three categories: air, land, and water.
The students took all the felt pieces and laid out a felt city and connected the different city blocks with the road strips and placed all the vehicles in the appropriate places. The military vehicles went onto the Air Force base block, the boats were put onto the lake, the rest of the vehicles were parked on the car lot, the shopping center, the church parking lot, and some were at homes.
They made sure that every city block had cars placed on them and that the traffic signals were carefully placed in a way that made sense to them. There was quite a bit of discussion about where everything should be placed, how the roads should connect the city blocks, and the blocks that needed to be away from the homes and stores (the military base and the lake).
Then they used the sportiest cars and took them to the race track and imitated the movie "Cars".
For snack we made our own convertible car and traffic light. Our cars were apple wedges with banana slices for wheels attached with peanut butter;
and celery sticks some with peanut butter and some with cream cheese. We used red, yellow, and green M&M's for the lights.
We did a taste test to see if we liked the cream cheese or the peanut butter filling best for our traffic lights. We each hypothesized which one would be the favorite. The students hypothesized that the peanut butter one would be the favorite. Since I love cream cheese and celery, I hypothesized it might be the cream cheese. It was unanimous we liked the peanut butter and chocolate M&M traffic light combination the best. The students' hypothesis was proven to be correct and mine was proven to be incorrect.
To round out our snack we had milk and ABC cookies.
After snack, we got to work building our own class car. We discussed the things that we would need and looked over the supplies I had gathered to see how we could use them to build a car. We chose the long box for the body of the car and the smaller box to make the wheels. One student used a container lid to trace around for the wheels and one of our stools to trace for the steering wheel. A toilet paper roll was chosen for the steering column, but later was replaced with a paper towel roll, because it was longer.
Each wheel was colored, the first wheels were colored to resemble the real thing, but then the students got creative and made the second two wheels very colorful. While one student was tracing the wheels the other student was busy cutting out white ovals for the front lights, red squares for the back lights, and orange rectangles for the turn signals. I was impressed with the detail, the turn signals.
We soldered our car together with tape and glue. With the car all put together the students took turns driving it around as we sang the song "Daddy's Rusty Car."I provided the propulsion since it was on the carpet and the students couldn't push the car with some one in it. After school I realized we should have pushed it on the kitchen tile. A science discussion about friction to be used another day.
When I got tired I took advantage of their inner diva and we turned it into a quick photo shoot. They both love to model and pose!
After the photo shoot, we labeled all the parts of the car so that we could remember them the next time we play with the car. (The top picture is the steering wheel, bottom is windshield) I wrote the words the students remembered on the white board and they wrote the words on the corresponding part of the car.
Homework was a "Land, Air, and Water" chart that they were to complete, the second page had clip art pictures they were to cut out and categorize them. A worksheet of sight words by Sharon Dudley at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Sight-Word-Coloring-Worksheet-it-in-if-236251. And a chart to record the color of cars seen on the trip home, found at http://youngkindergarten.blogspot.com/2012/10/traffic-report.html.
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