Vroom Vroom! (Friday’s Journal)

Date: July 29, 2022
Theme: Transportation Day
Facilitators: Simran K, Simran J, Raveena, Jasmine, Sifat and Swechha

Introduction

Do you want a ride?
Let me take you through today’s full day, which was based on the theme of ‘Transportation’. 

‘Transportation’ as an umbrella goal is not only fascinating for toddlers but is also educational in terms of learning about traffic lights and zebra crossings, cooperation towards co-passengers and a simple everyday knowledge about how they travel from their houses to school and vice-versa. We basically focussed on land transportation today.

Why did we plan this day?

Language Development: There was a lot of conversation and description about the skills that were being used while introducing the transportation vehicles and road safety rules, like “Can we watch right and left before crossing the light? “Stop for the red light and Go for the green light.” Also, the story about ‘Tuk Tuk wheels’ involved a lot of verbs like ‘Wiper of the bus goes squish-squish’.  All this can induce language development.
Development of abstract thoughts: Abstract thinking is the ability to understand concepts that are not directly tied to tangible items or experiences. Subsequently, every Friday, we make sure that some pretend play is happening to encourage abstract thinking. Today, the kids pretended to ride from one place to another in their pretend cars and buses. 
Social Skills: The toddlers were encouraged to ride together, sharing space with their peers. They were invited to hold hands while walking down the road and wait for other vehicles ahead of them.  

How did it go? (Finally!)

During work-time, one set of activities involved using soft pastels to color. On a white canvas, an outline of a car on the road was made and the kids were prompted to color as per their choice. They were exploring the soft pastels for the first time and it felt like these kids were connecting a lot with the sensory play involved while using their art material. Aayansh seems to be very interested in identifying the colors around him. Atharv Goel engaged in dabbing the color on the floor and explored the powder created out of soft pastels. Vanya, Yuvaan and Hriday engaged in smudging the colored part with paint brushes. In the center area, another facilitator helped the kids in forming a railway track and riding the trains over them.  

During the small group, a long road was made out of canvas (Equivalent to the length of the class) and Cars and buses with broad windows were crafted using craft papers.. The kids were either holding the cars or putting their faces out of the windows while riding the cars with the facilitators. Two facilitators were holding traffic lights near the zebra crossing path. They would loudly announce, “It is a red light, Can we STOP?”, “Let's look right and left while crossing the zebra crossing”, “Walk slowly on the yellow light” and finally “GO with green light”. The kids seemed to be enjoying it a lot! They were cooperating with each other while sharing the windows of the vehicles and followed all the safety instructions while riding. 

During story time, the educator read the book, ‘Tuk Tuk Wheels Go Round and Round’. This is one of their favorite story books and remembered all the prompts when the story was read. It added to the theme of transportation very well. 

Overall, the whole class was filled with the vroom vroom sound and the drivers seemed eager to drive all the vehicles around!