Cars, cars, and more cars…. the children have been showing strong interest in dramatic play with cars. They love to drive them around the room playing out different scenes. An activity where they had markers on the back of the cars and a big piece of paper to draw on, brought out dramatic scenes with an ambulance and saving a van, along with different car accidents and other rescue play. This interest, along with an interest in letters and spelling out their names, inspired me to make a road map for the children to explore.
I created a road map with parking spaces that each had all of the letters of the alphabet on them. I then took some cars and put all of the letters on them as well, with the idea to match them up in my mind. I wondered which children would notice this and play the matching game, and who would choose a different way to play.
Alex noticed the letters right away. He brought Otis over and invited him to help find the matches. "Look!' Alex said to Otis, "they have letters on the cars AND on the road. Can you help me match them up?" Off the two went. They began by identifying the letter on the car and then worked together to find its match on the road map.
When Stéphane joined them, he was more focussed on the types of cars. He found a tractor and began to play with it, driving it along the road. "Can you find the letter match for that tractor?" Alex asked him. Stéphane looked at his tractor with a letter X on the top with a curious look on his face. Alex must have read this look too because he pointed at the letter X on the tractor and said, "it has a letter X on the top, Stéphane. Can you find the same letter on the road?" Stéphane looked at the road map for a while and then found it and parked his tractor on it. When this group of three finished the matching, they noticed that the two police cars were parked together, as were the two construction vehicles, and the ambulance and the fire truck. They began to dramatically play with these main cars. Stéphane was drawn to the construction vehicles, while Otis and Alex played rescue themed play with the other cars and the rescue vehicles.
Another group that worked together was Stefan and Oscar. They picked up cars one by one and then helped each other find the match on the road map.
Xavier enjoyed lining the cars up on the road, one behind the other, in a long line up as he sang, "line up, line up, everybody line up."
Nina and Kinga asked why there were also markers on the table. They were the first to notice this. "Do you want to colour on the map and make it your own?" I asked them. They both said, "yes." Kinga took the purple marker and began to trace a line following the road lines, as If to make the mark a car would make when driving down the road. She followed it around and around the map for a while. Nina took her marker, a dark pink colour, and coloured everywhere.
Austin came and he sat beside me, took a brown marker and also began to colour. He stayed in one spot and made different circles along the road. I wondered if this was dirt or mud on the road. Alex returned when he noticed the markers and he took a car and a marker and began to trace it on the road map.
Alex then lined up a bunch of cars side by side, traced them and made wheels on each traced car. "These are the cars for the dune buggy to jump over," he said. He then took the dune buggy car and made it jump, one by one on each car that he had drawn.
The children truly enjoyed this exploration in many ways. They showed letter recognition abilities and dramatic play imagination. Team work and social skills were evident as they worked together in both of these types of play as well. I wonder how I could bring more emergency and rescue dramatic play into the room for them to explore and what kind of scenes that might create.
