Letters and numbers are more fun with trucks

I thought I'd share two days worth of school time here where I decided that we'd use our beloved trucks to make it feel just like we were playing.  High-interest stuff always brings on the best learning for us. :)

On day 1, I had these letter cards that I found as a freebie on teachers pay teachers.  I cannot think of the link off-hand, but if you really want them, I'll sure try to dig it up off of my work computer for you.  Letter flash cards or actual objects would work just as well. 
I laid out the letter cards at one end of our living room floor.  I only put out 6--we are working on beginning sounds (Jack) so 26 cards would be a little overwhelming!  I put the 6 letters that matched the beginning sounds of these pictures on the floor across the living room.  We looked at the letters together and named them, and then I let them each take one at a time and put it into their dump truck, roll it across the living room and find the correct picture to place the letter on.  They loved it.  They kept asking for more and more until we had done all of the letter cards!  Here are some pictures to explain a little better how this went.

Here are their trucks--3 to choose from to try to cut down on the fighting... and the letters.  They chose one letter at a time, stuck it in the back of their trucks and drove them across the living room.

 

On day 2, I decided to carry forward the truck theme with another freebie I found via Pinterest.  You can access the truck pattern here: http://www.themeasuredmom.com/printable-counting-mat-fill-the-dump-truck/

 

PS--this activity ended after about 10 blissful minutes with fighting over the trucks and the toddler screaming about Jack taking all of his letters.

 

I thought we would have more fun with this job if I put their numbers (1-5 for Harry and 6-20 for Jack) in their own individual trucks so they could draw out of their instead of a pile.  I chose to have them fill their dump trucks with Legos, and put them in a big truck for them to dig out.  I tried to work with Harry on identifying those numbers 1-5, but he was just so excited to put Legos on the mat that it was difficult to get him to understand the one-to-one counting.  Jack could do this independently, so this was mostly about working with Harry--with limited success. :) But we had fun!

 

 

The set-up: a mat and truck full of numbers for each with Legos to share.

 

 

 PS--this activity ended after 10 minutes of bliss with fighting over trucks and the toddler screaming about Jack taking all of his Legos. Ugh. 

Let me know if you try it and have fun with trucks, too!