The Trucks are Stuck!

We read a great book today called The Trucks are Stuck by Judy Sierra. In this story a variety of vehicles become stuck in some very deep, sticky mud. The children were able to chime along with the story and predict what would happen next due to the patterning nature of the book.

First a pizza van gets stuck.
Next a police car gets stuck.
Then a tow truck gets stuck.
Then a backhoe gets stuck.
Finally a fire truck gets stuck.

At the end of the story a group of preschool children who are nearby race to the recue and help dig out each of the vehicles.

To extend our literacy experience and integrate some math into our circle time, we asked the children to vote for their favourite vehicle from the story. The pizza van overwhelmingly won with a vote of 13!

We are focusing on helping our children to understand the comprehension elements of stories (who, what, where, when, why, and how) and retelling the events in proper sequence. We use the words first, next, then, and finally to help describe the order of events. To enrich your literacy experiences at home, why don't you consider using these words too when reading stories with your children?

During play time we decided to create the setting of the story in our sand table - the perfect place to have a large, messy mud puddle!  The children helped us gather the various vehicles from around the classroom. They carefully observed the vehicles to make sure that each matched the description in the book. They also made sure that the preschool children used at the center were animals (and not our little people) as the children in the book were animal figures. One child made a pizza van because we did not have one.

The children spent time working together exploring the mud and retelling the story with some adult prompting.

Some Ontario Curriculum expectations these activities fulfilled includes:

1.2   identify and talk about their own interests and preferences

1.6 use language to talk about their thinking, to reflect, and to solve problems

2.9 retell stories, in proper sequence, that have been read by and with the EL–K team, using pictures in the book and/or props (e.g., use props such as finger puppets or flannel-board characters; use plastic models at the sand table to tell the story “The Gingerbread Man”)

DM5.2 collect objects and data and make representations of their observations, using concrete graphs