Teaching Language with Vehicles

Speech and language skills are more fun to learn when playing. Remember-when children have fun, they are learning something new.

Sounds to model when playing with vehicles:

Beep Beep
KKKKKKKuh (crashing sound)
Screeech (cars stopping)
Vrrrrmmmmm (cars, trucks, engines)
Shhhhh (airplane or spaceship)
Bump Bump
Choo Choo
Honk Honk

Words to model when playing with vehicles:

Ready-Set-Go!
Up and Down
Fast and Slow
Dirty and Clean
Stop and Go
Parts of vehicles: wheels, doors, lights, steering wheel, windows, wings, engine

Lots of concepts to teach while playing with cars:

Location Words/Prepositions (up, down, over there, under, over, on top, next to)

Some examples of activities to teach prepositions:

Pretend your vehicles go around trees, under bridges, on top of buildings, or fly over mountains
Give directions using preposition words
Find vehicles that are hidden (in books or with toys) using preposition words (ex. "find the car next to the tree)

Adjectives (colors, sizes, clean/dirty, long/short, loud/quiet)

Some examples of activities to teach adjectives:

Sort the cars into categories (colors, sizes, function, etc.)
Ask for specific cars using adjectives (ex. "Can I have the yellow car"
Add to your child's utterances. If he says "car", you can say "yes, it's a blue car" or "fast car" or "dirty car"

Car Wash

I have made many shoeboxes into a car wash. Just use a pair of scissors to cut an entrance and exit in a shoe box. It's fun to paint the outside and draw buttons to make the car wash "work". Buttons can say "on", "go", "extra dirty", "big car", "small car".

Use a erasable marker to draw "dirt" on the car before it goes through the wash. A sponge or cleaning wipe can be used to clean off the dirt. A wash cloth can be used to dry the vehicle and make it shiny!

Carl's Car Wash from Super Simple TV (videos available on YouTube)

These videos are great to show children how a car wash works. It's interactive. It has a good pace. And..there are a lot of different videos with different vehicles (taxi, truck, police car, and construction vehicles)

Build a Town

Use boxes as buildings. Use construction paper to make lakes and roads. Rugs with images of roads and towns are a big help!

Amazon Link

Pretend to give directions to get to a location
Pretend to run errands and go shopping at different places
Pretend to deliver mail and packages to different locations

Build a Vehicle

When my daughters were little, if I had a big box it became a vehicle. You can turn a big box into a car, bus, truck, boat, or spaceship.

Here they are in their spaceship. Winter hats became helmets. They drew buttons and a steering wheel. They used a toy computer and a folder with school work to navigate and give directions. Of course they brought snacks and drinks for the journey!