Matching and Measuring with Toy Vehicles

I’m always on the hunt for activities involving vehicles. Although I love watching my son drive them around while making up stories, I like to encourage other play too. He has enjoyed matching things for a while now, and has recently become very interested in ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller‘, so when I found a matching and sizing game with circles on one of my favourite sites: Irresistible Ideas for play based learning. I couldn’t wait to give it a go and then try to involve his cars.

First he helped me choose an assortment of vehicles of different sizes. This took a while as we talked about how to measure them and how many we needed to fit onto a piece of A3 paper. After sorting, measuring and arranging we ended up with 13 vehicles.

The Chosen Cars

Then he watched as I drew around them. He enjoyed this as asking for us to draw around things has been a favourite of his for a long time. Thirteen vehicles on one piece of paper was a thing of wonder for him.

After drawing around all the vehicles

I drew with pencil first but then went over it with pen to create a good photo. I did find that I lost some of the detail that the pencil picked up though, so I would definitely draw in pencil next time.

Then I left everything out for him to play with when he wished. I wanted him to have a go straight away, but he was too busy driving the ‘car bus’ (a huge truck he uses to transport cars) as some of the cars had broken down and needed a lift to the mechanic! He did do it eventually, I just had to be patient:

All in place

We had lots of fun with this activity and I can imagine doing it again with other objects. He enjoyed the original circle idea, so we will try other shapes too. Themes would be fun too, like food or painting equipment. Even if we collected random object from around the house or park, I think we would benefit greatly from this simple matching game.