Transportation Theme
The children really enjoyed learning about different forms of transport as the children explored and shared their common interests. The children learnt about heavy machinery, emergency vehicles, trains, planes, buses, cars, road rules and safety rules.
While learning about heavy machinery the children learnt about the different types of machinery; the purpose for the machines and the different parts of the machine. Jackson, Thomas and Lillie all share the common interest that their Dad’s and Grandad’s all operate heavy machinery and the children all had prior knowledge that they could share with each other.
When learning about emergency vehicles, we discussed what are emergency vehicles in our community and the purpose of the sirens. We experimented with a listening activity called ‘Listening For The Sirens’. Ms Bernie had read the story book of ‘Emergency Vehicles, Listen for the sound’. This story is about recognising the different sirens of the emergency vehicles (ambulance, police and fire truck). Then after the story Ms Bernie had a box of bells. First of all there was a discussion about the different sounds then Ms Bernie had the bell behind her back and she would ring one bell at a time. The children had to guess which bell is ringing. Furthermore we had a discussion about rules and safety rules then Seth, Ben and Tau decided that they would construct an obstacle course for traffic to follow during a car race. The boys used road signs and discussed the safety rules with everyone before starting the race. Rhiannon and Charlotte decided to make ‘stop’ and ‘go’ lights for everyone to be safe and sensible.
The next day we moved on to a discussion about trains and read the story about ‘The Little Engine’. We also done various numeracy activities such as sequencing different size trains from smallest to tallest; counting trains both horizontally and vertically and making trains using different shapes and patterns. And Ms Bernie also read the story ‘Panda the train driver’ and learnt the train driver shouts all aboard to the passengers before he takes off from the station. When we were going outside we all sat behind Torfinn who was the train driver and he shouted “all aboard” before he took the train full of passengers down the ramp and to the sandpit train station. Outside Torfinn also made a train roller painting. And Miss Bernadette put one of our old slides into the sand pit for us to use as our train track and walk along or drive our cars over.
Throughout this theme, we learnt the importance of safety while driving on the road and operating heavy machinery. And furthermore we learnt that there are many different types of transportation we could use to travel in.






