Oh, how Sam LOVES the Little Blue Truck books. They get read again and again and again in our house, so to spice things up and encourage some imaginary play (one of our IDP goals for Sam at the moment), I decided to put together this simple Little Blue Truck story telling basket for him to explore.
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Now while we have Little Blue Truck Leads the Way {CAN} (my personal fave being a city girl myself), Little Blue Truck’s Halloween {CAN}, Little Blue Truck’s Christmas {CAN}, and Little Blue Truck’s Springtime {CAN} (my least favourite and a bit of a disappointment to be honest), Sam seems to seek out the original Little Blue Truck {CAN} most often, so that’s what we went with for our story telling basket.
We just used things we had on hand (hence our little GREEN truck and a missing goat), but I think we did okay! If you’ve never seen these Holztiger wooden animals, they are my absolute favourite. They’re pricey, but we collect a couple at a time (usually in Christmas stockings and Easter baskets) and the quality is outstanding. Definitely a collection I’ll hold onto until my kids are grown.
Here’s what we included in our Little Blue Truck story telling basket {or tray}…
- Little Blue Truck {CAN}
- wool felt squares in colours that coordinate with the illustrations of the book {CAN}
- a CAT dump truck
- a pick up truck
- a Holztiger cow
- a Holztiger horse
- a Holztiger hen
- a Holztiger chick
- a Holztiger sheep
- a Holztiger frog
- a Holztiger goose (meant to be our duck)
- a Holztiger pig
- and we would have included this Holztiger goat had we had him
{Canadian friends, you can find the Holztiger collection on amazon.ca here, but most are incredibly overpriced… I recommend getting them from Dilly Dally, our very favourite Vancouver toy shop instead.}
I set the basket and a tray out on the coffee table just before picking Miss G up from school so it was there for them to discover when we walked in the door.
Now while I set put this story telling basket together with Sam in mind, I knew Miss G would be just as into it… She dove right in, helped Sam use the felt squares to create the ground, and grabbed the book and began reading, while sam played with the vehicles and animals as she read.
And boy was he ever into it!
His play didn’t end once Grae was finished reading the book, either. He kept vrooming the dump truck around, getting it stuck in the brown ‘mud’, and using the animals to {very enthusiastically} help him push it out. Then the animals were getting stuck in the mud and the trucks were getting them out, and THEN the truck and the dump truck were having races around the farm! This is the beauty of a story telling basket or tray – there’s no right or wrong way to play and the original story the collection of items is based on is just a jumping off point.
Miss G actually got in on the fun and helped set up this fun little scene too, which I just left out as is. The plan is to leave it out for a while so that the kids can come back to it and enjoy it as they please, and I’m guessing it’ll be revisited again and again.
In the meantime, I’ve got another really fun Little Blue Truck activity in mind that I know the kids will just love… Can’t wait to share!
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