Introduction to Transportation

 Ever since we started the school year I have noticed the students becoming excited with things that move.  When the students shared their treasure blocks a lot - and I mean A LOT - of them included some form of transportation.  Their treasure blocks had everything from trains, race cars and monster trucks, to bikes.  Before our holiday break I asked the students what they wanted to learn about when we returned from break.  Not to my surprise, they wanted to know how cars move and how they are built, why trains run on a track and much more that pertained to transportation.  

This week we began at the foundation and actually learning what the word "transportation" means.  We read a couple books and looked at a couple websites to come up with a definition. "Transportation is the movement of people, animals or goods from one place to another."  Once we had  a definition we started to break it apart to understand it better.  So, we then started making a list of things that move people from one place to another.  We came up with some of the following:  boats, passenger trains, zip lines, subway trains, roller coasters, buses, elevators, escalators, hot air balloons, air planes, space shuttles, automobile, emergency vehicles, and things that move one person (bikes, scooters, skates snowboard etc...).   We talked about each type of transportation that moves people, or a person from one location to another.  Here are some photos of our Promethean board "transportation" flip chart. 

 Later, each child picked a different form of transportation that moves people from one place to another.  Here are some of their illustrations.

 car

 Elevator

 tow trucks

 school bus

 hot air balloon

 roller coaster

 Zip-line

 cruise ship

 baby stroller

We will continue this study for a very long time.  The students are thrilled and I think they are going to thoroughly enjoy learning about all different modes of transportation.   I look forward to sharing more of our discoveries and experiences with you as our study becomes more in depth.  

Take care and have a beautiful week. 

Mrs. Julie Atkin