You have come to the right place if you are looking for fun, engaging and exciting Transportation themed activities to do with toddlers, preschoolers and kindergartners. Our activities are widely used by teachers, moms, dads, child care providers and more!

All our activities are available at no cost and are free to print and share. Select below to get started.

Transportation Arts and Crafts

Transportation Stencils
Materials: cardboard, tape, paper, thinned paint, brushes, crayons.
Procedure:
Cut transportation shapes from thin cardboard such as potato chip boxes.
Attach loops of tape, sticky side out, to the backs of the shapes and stick them on sheets of paper.
Let the children brush thinned paint around the edges of their shapes, extending out about an inch. It’s not necessary for them to paint their shapes, but they probably will.
Remove the cardboard shapes, leaving unpainted shapes in the middle of the papers.
When the papers are dry, let the children decorate their shapes with crayons, if desired.

Tugboats
Materials:
1/2 pint milk carton
six black construction paper circles
toilet paper tubes with two 1-in. slits in bottom directly across from one another
cotton balls
red and black tempera paint glue.

Instructions:
Have the children paint the sides of the milk carton red and the toilet paper tube black. Add some white glue to the red paint to help it adhere to the milk carton.

Before the paint dries, the children can add black circles to the sides of the boat, three to a side. They will stick without gluing when glue is already in paint. Push the tube onto the boat center.

Pull and stretch the cotton ball glue to the top of the tube. After boats dry attach and string and use in water.

Watch The Flying Jet
You can watch a jet flying all over the sky, no matter where you are. You’ll need a cardboard tube, a piece of plastic wrap and tape. Trace around the end of the tube on the plastic wrap with a ball point pen.

Draw a small jet plane on the middle of the circle. Then tape the plastic wrap to the tube, keeping the jet in the middle of the tube opening. To see the jet fly, just look up at the sky or ceiling through the open end of your telescope.

Move your head around slowly while looking through it and the jet will seem to be flying across the sky.

 

Transportation Games and Activities

Carpet Boating
Materials needed: Carpet squares or a towels on a clean (non-carpeted) floor.
What to do: Have the children put the carpet on the floor with the carpet side down (slides better.) Have them sit on the carpet piece with their feet extended out in front and their knees bent.

Explain how they can pull themselves forward with their feet. Have them work their arms as if they are rowing a boat. Sing ‘Row, row, row your boat.’

Have the children kneel on the carpet and pull themselves forward (scooter style), or have them put their hands on the carpet and run pushing carpet on the floor.

How do I get there?
Materials needed: puppet, large bag, toy vehicles (helicopter, train, airplane, car, truck, motorcycle, boat, rocket ship or horse)
Put all the toys in the bag.
Introduce the puppet: ‘My friend has a problem. He needs to go to —-. How can he get there?’
Let children name different ways the puppet can travel.
Ask if they will be good ways to travel. Why or why not?

Show the bag. Explain that inside the bag are ways that we can travel, and that the word we use is transportation. This is how we get from one place to another. Describe a mode of transportation that you have in the bag. Have the children make guesses. Remove toys.

Transportation Pictures
Display pictures of the following means of transportation: truck, bus, car, train, plane, ship, rocket. Ask the following questions and let the children decide which vehicle answers the questions.
1. Which one is used for going to the moon?
2. Which one travels on tracks?
3. Which one carries vegetables from farm to city?
4. Which one goes through the air?
5. Which one do we park in our garage?
6. Which one stops in many cities and carries many people?
7. Which one travels on the ocean?

 

Transportation Recipes and Snacks

Apple Sailboat Snack
The children make apple sailboats from:
An apple slice
A triangular piece of cheese
A toothpick.
Eat for snack.

Transportation Songs, Poems and Finger Plays

Down By The Station
Down by the station
Early in the morning,
See the little pufferbillies
All in a row.
See the station master
Pull a little handle.
Chug, chug, Toot, toot.
Off we go!

Little Red Caboose
Little red caboose, Little red caboose,
Little red caboose behind the train, train,
Smokestack on his back, Going down the track,
Little red caboose behind the train, train.

 

 

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All of our theme ideas have come from our imagination and from reader submissions.  Please use this form to contact us if you have crafts, activities, games, recipes, songs or poems that you would like us to add to this theme.