Transport activities – vans and lorries

Focusing on vans and lorries is ideal for drawing on children’s wide-ranging personal experiences, from visiting an ice-cream van to seeing construction vehicles on building sites and driving past large lorries when they go on car journeys.

IN THE SETTING

• Help the children to gather your small-world play vehicle resources and challenge them to find all the vans and lorries. Explain that vans and lorries – or trucks – are vehicles which are used to transport goods or people. Lorries tend to be bigger than vans and often carry heavy goods.
• Talk about the children’s experiences of vans and lorries – have they bought ice-cream from a van, or helped unload an online grocery delivery? Perhaps a child has recently moved home and can recall the removal van, or they can remember seeing heavy goods vehicles. Have they been lucky enough to ride in a van or lorry – what did it feel like?
• Look at your range of small-world vehicles, or show the children images of trucks and lorries, and consider what different goods might be transported in them. Point out the specific features such as the big tyres, large rear doors, containers and cab where the driver sits. Discuss that liquids from petrol to chemicals and milk are also transported by lorries called tankers.
• Use YouTube to show footage of a range of vans and lorries and how they make deliveries, such as the large haulage companies and Royal Mail.
• Share linked books with the children, have fun with language and introduce the children to possible new words such as ‘juggernaut’ and ‘articulated’. Can children guess what they mean?
  
  

IN THE COMMUNITY

• Do you have any planned deliveries where the children could see goods such as groceries, stationery or equipment being unloaded? Are you sited near to a busy road where children can safely observe the range of vans and lorries that drive past? Could you walk to a construction site and observe the traffic marshal as they manage deliveries; or arrange to be at a post box when it’s collection time?
• Have an internet search for any haulage or delivery companies that are based near to you and contact them to see if they would be happy for you to arrange a trip or, perhaps, for them to bring a lorry to your setting. Plan with the children what they would like to find out, such as what it feels like to drive a truck and where they sleep for long distances.
• Perhaps a parent has a van that they could bring to the nursery for the children to explore, or maybe one of them is actually a lorry driver or knows one who you could invite to come and speak to the children about their work.
• Check out the vintage and converted vans used to serve food and hot drinks from at local street food markets, or invite an ice-cream van to your nursery for a summer treat.
  
  

Bus books

Fiction

• Tip Tip Dig Dig by Emma Garcia – Bold and bright pictures, simple language.
• I’m The Bin Lorry Driver by David Semple – Your job is to collect the recycling from the town’s busy streets!
• Roadwork by Sally Sutton – There are many big machines and busy people involved in building a road, and this board book follows them, from clearing a pathway to rolling the tar.
• Little Blue Truck by Alice Shertle – Blue is the friendliest little pick-up truck on the road and always wants to help.
• Trucks Roll! by George Ella Lyon and Craig Frazier – A fun, rhyming text for young children about all that trucks do, day and night.
• Smash! Crash! by Jon Scieszka, David Shannon, Loren Long and David Gordon – The vehicles are all having a smashing time in Trucktown.
• The Big Concrete Lorry by Shirley Hughes – Building an extension becomes tricky when the concrete lorry delivers its load.

Non-fiction

• Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry – This classic picturebook still holds lots of appeal.
• Trucks by Byron Barton – Simple text and vibrant illustrations.
• How a Recycling Truck Works by Lara Bryan – Peep under flaps and through holes to find out how it works.
• My Big Truck Book by Roger Priddy – Discover trucks including fire engines, big rigs, bulldozers, diggers and giant excavators.
  
  

KEY VOCABULARY

• Van, lorry, truck, flat-bed, cargo, pick-up truck, vehicle, haulage, dustbin van, ice-cream van, cement mixer, articulated, container, dumper truck, monster truck, wheels, grabber, excavator, transporter, tanker, juggernaut, cab