Cars, Cars & more Cars

[Tealady]

I have a little 18mth mindee who comes to me and he is obsessed with pushing toy vehicles around. I'm sure this is some kind of Schema but don't know a lot about them.

Anyway all he wants to do is push things around. You can see him working things out, like seeing what it's like to push them on different surfaces, seeing how many he can manage at once (he lines them up and pushes them a bit at a time, taking it in turns with each vehicle).

Anyway I am stuck on how to develop this further. I tried a water tray and the aquadraw but he did that for all of two minutes then went back to pushing them along the carpet round and round the room. We had the bricks out and we made towers that he knocked down with a truck, we've got the diggers out and he's filled them with bits and then pushed them round, but where do I go fom here?

[Penny1959]

I have a little 18mth mindee who comes to me and he is obsessed with pushing toy vehicles around. I'm sure this is some kind of Schema but don't know a lot about them.

Anyway all he wants to do is push things around. You can see him working things out, like seeing what it's like to push them on different surfaces, seeing how many he can manage at once (he lines them up and pushes them a bit at a time, taking it in turns with each vehicle).

Anyway I am stuck on how to develop this further. I tried a water tray and the aquadraw but he did that for all of two minutes then went back to pushing them along the carpet round and round the room. We had the bricks out and we made towers that he knocked down with a truck, we've got the diggers out and he's filled them with bits and then pushed them round, but where do I go fom here?

It is quite common for a child to seem to be 'stuck' and not progressing but what they are doing is consolidating their learning - as you have observed he is testing things out - he is making sure he has tried all possibilities and while doing this his brain is busy making connections at a rapid rate - he is in fact 'taking next steps' all on his own.

I would not worry too much about 'moving him on' but if you want to you could give him different textured mats to push the cars on- so maybe a towel, or corregated card or pasta stuck to a board and so on. You could print and laminate some car pictures - quite large and suggest / model to him how he could if interested 'park' all the red cars on the laminated picture of a red car. You could maybe take him to a car show room (just looking tell the sales man but have you any brochures that I could take home to show my partner) if you get brochures let the child 'read' them, sit together and count wheels, look at and describe them - guess if you think it is a fast car or a slow car. Go back to the toy cars make a ramp talk about the cars going fast down the ramp and slow up the ramp. give the child different lenghts of cadboard or paper road - a) to make a road way and b) to see how many cars he can line up on each different lenght of road.

Observe to see if he lines other things up, or interested in other things with wheels, or other thing 'go' such as toy trains - then you may be able to work out which scheme he is following - if any.

And if he is not interested in any of the things you offer - well that is fine = just let him play and find out things in his own way - being there to support as and when he needs it

Penny :)

[Helen79]

we use the old toy cars to paint with, put big blobs of paint at one end of the paper and let him run the cars through to make tracks, then once it's dry he can use it as a road for his cars. A roll a wallpaper works really well.

[leeloo1]

I was going to say ramps, but thats already been suggested. :)

You could also try putting together cars of different colours and describing what you're (or he's) doing - 'oh John's got 2 red cars and I've got 1 blue one'.

Do you also have cars (or trains) that join together with magnets?

Or make 'garages' out of a line of cardboard/stacking boxes - different sizes/colours to fit/match the different cars in/to.

Or drawing a road on big paper to drive the cars round?

[Tealady]

Thanks for the ideas. Really helpful. I get stuck sometimes for how to extend play. Whilst he really does enjoy just pushing them around and does get alot from it I just feel a bit lame in not trying to give him other activities in which he can follow this interest.

When I said cars I did mean any toy vehicle, he just seems to love them.:)

[samb]

You could try extending with different vehicles in different ways - eg have a train week and take him on a train, play with trains, have books about trains, put train tickets and timetables out to play with, toy whistles etc? i live 20 mins from Gatwick so we had a plane week where we visited the airport, made paper aeroplanes, made luggage labels, looked at maps, made a passport etc. I know he is young but it doesn't hurt to introduce role play toys that suit his current interest. He may start to get into role play purely as you have started it with his interests.