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Wheels

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Core Learning Experience + Supplies and Equipment

• ​Go on a wheel hunt! Let’s get our trusty magnifying glasses (or clipboards and pencils) and search for big wheels and little wheels throughout the house or school. (Toys, kitchen and garage tools, toy wagons etc, also anything with visible gears such as music boxes, clocks etc)
• Make a ramp with blocks or similar. Try rolling some different items down the incline. Try other blocks, toys with wheels, dolls, rolls of tape, books, balls. Which items seem to go faster and easier?

Possible/Expected Discoveries

• Wheels are circle shapes. Wheels have been very important to people for a long, long time. Just imagine if we didn’t have wheels, there would be a lot of things that we could not do. Can you think of something we could not do if wheels were not invented?
• Many vehicles have wheels. Can you think of any things that go that do not have wheels? Maybe rowboat, hot air balloon, canoe.
• Some things have 1,2,3,4 or more wheels. Let’s make a list of everything we can think of with 4 wheels. (Do we count steering wheels? Or gears? Wow, it’s up to you!)

Extended Learning and Other Curriculum Areas

• ​​Use wheel shaped pasta to make a collage. Older children can draw vehicles with the pasta attached as wheels.
• Make crayon rubbings of wheels on real vehicles, such as a car.
• Clipart collage of things with wheels. Teacher labels.
• Make a vehicle with creative junk.   Try to have some spools or similar available for “wheels”. Or even cardboard shapes

Activity Packs and Printables

Lotto/matching - print 2 copies. Different kinds of wheels.

Transportation/wheels - set of large manipulatives for vocabulary, recognition, memory games etc.

Websites

Wheels theme activities for preschool
​Bicycles Theme Activities for Preschool
Transportation Theme Activities for Preschool
Comprehensive WHEELS theme unit

Books

​Big Wheels by Anne Rockwell
What is a Wheel and Axle by Lloyd Douglas
I Spy Little Wheels by Jean Marzollo