Little Blue Truck Story Telling Basket

3 / 2 / 183 / 12 / 18

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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Car and Truck Colour Sorting

2 / 22 / 182 / 26 / 18

Oh my goodness… This boy and his cars and trucks. He’s nothing short of obsessed. The other thing he’s been really into for months? Colours. Smack the two together and you’ve got a car and truck colour sorting activity that’s incredibly easy to pull off, but super engaging for little car and truck lovers like Sam.

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Here’s what you’ll need:

coloured construction paper {CAN}
sticky tape
small cars and trucks in various colours

Set up couldn’t be easier… Basically choose a surface {we went with our coffee table, but a floor would be great too} and loosely tape sheets of construction paper in various colours down to it. These will serve as your colour categories or ‘parking spots’ or ‘garages’ if your little one is as obsessed as mine is.

Now this activity was actually inspired by something I saw Sam doing in the playroom a few days earlier {he was colour matching his cars and our SPRI balance pods {CAN} while carefully placing the cars atop the pods} so I knew I probably wouldn’t have to give him much guidance… I simply set out a little basket filled with his cars and asked if he wanted to park them in their spots and with that, he got started. My favourite thing was watching him with this little aqua car… He went back and forth between green and blue several times before deciding just to hang onto it – hah!

After that it was smooth sailing though… He’d often tell me the name of the car and then its colour as he was placing it in its spot.

{aqua car makes a reappearance}

At the beginning, he’d announce the colour of the truck or car and then simply place it down on the coordinating piece of construction paper…

But before long he was ‘vrrooooooming’ his cars across the coffee table and slamming on the brakes when they’d reached the parking spot.

Doesn’t this look like a total blast?

I’m guessing Sam thinks so because we’ve already played it again TWICE!

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Portable Car Play Kit

9 / 24 / 1411 / 11 / 14

Have I mentioned that Grae and I love putting together homemade gifts? Because we do. We love it so much in fact, that despite the fact that we had actually already purchased a gift for today’s party, we decided we would make something instead – just yesterday afternoon! Today’s birthday boy is a car lover through and through, so we used that for our inspiration. He also {like many of our international friends} is often on the go, so we decided to make him a portable car play kit so that he has a fun and easy way to take his beloved toys with him – whether it be to a restaurant, on an airplane, or over to a friend’s house.

Cut & Paste City Car Mat

11 / 7 / 1311 / 7 / 13

Deep in a bin of secondhand Duplo I picked up yesterday, Miss G discovered a tiny little Lightening McQueen car and immediately fell in love. Though she’s not really watched any movies yet, she and Brad have watched bits and pieces of Cars on their special days together and she adores the characters. Upon discovering him, she suggested that we build him a track to drive on. She most likely had our painter’s tape roadway in mind, but when I suggested a cut and paste city with lots of roads for driving, she was more than game.

Table Top Washi Tape Roadway

8 / 9 / 137 / 26 / 16

Have I mentioned how much I love when fun, unplanned activities just come about naturally during the day? I do! In fact, I often find that they’re some of our very favourites. That’s exactly what happened today with our super simple table top roadway.