Vroom! Vroom!

It's time to roll out the cars and trucks and things that go here at Small Talk!  This month our theme is Community Helpers/Cars and Trucks.  What better way to get started than pulling out the City rug and a bin full of vehicles?  

I bought this rug at Home Depot many years ago and it still is a favorite with my preschool kiddos.  It features roads that take you to many places in the city, including the hospital, police station, fire station and post office.

I made a "map" to help us get to all the places we need to go.  I took pictures of all the destinations on the rug and then used Boardmaker to make cards for my map.  I punched two holes in the top of each card and used metal rings to hold them together.  We select a vehicle and a place to start on the rug, and then flip to the first page of our map book.  We drive our vehicle to the place that matches the picture.  This is where you get to be creative.  Depending on the goals I'm working on, sometimes the child needs to answer a couple of questions about the place we're visiting, or sometimes I have him or her list three things they might see there.  We always talk about who might work there, or what you might do if you were there.  You can also work on negatives (ex. "This is not the post office"), and a whole host of other language concepts.  I also use it to work on articulation skills by placing stacks of picture cards on each location and having the child say the target words before moving onto a new location. 

I took individual pictures of the locations on the rug and imported them into Boardmaker cells to make the pages of the map book.

An example of a city location and it's matching map card.

If you have this rug and would like copies of my photographs, download them here:

Car Rug Destinations 1
Car Rug Destinations 2
Car Rug Destinations 3

Nice chatting with you!

Pam