My son has never met a vehicle he doesn’t love, so I thought I would set up a construction themed Valentine’s play tray for him and his sister. To give the activity a little more interest for his older sister, I set up 2 letter recognition/ matching activities. The first one had the letters for “love” written on garages and the individual letters on construction vehicles so the kids could park each vehicle in the garage with the corresponding letter. The other one was to write the alphabet out in the middle of the tray and cover it with popcorn kernels. The kids could dig in the popcorn to find the letters and then match them with wooden letter blocks.
To set up the activity, I put our Tuff Tray on top of our Nugget foam play couches. I find if the tray is off the ground, it helps the kids keep the mess inside the tray. They are less tempted to scoop material into containers on the ground. I connected our IKEA Ravunge roads in a circle on the tray and wrote out the alphabet with a chalk marker in the centre of the circle. Then I set up a few magnetic tiles as “garages” and labeled them with “l”, “o”, “v”, “e” and then labeled four construction vehicles with the same letters. I poured the popcorn kernels on the tray to cover the letters, sprinkled some satin hearts, added a wooden dump truck tray, felt hearts and more vehicles. The last step was to add the wooden letter blocks, for matching with the letters hiding under the popcorn kernels.
Materials used in this activity
- Tuff Tray
- Popcorn Kernels (Bulk Barn)
- IKEA Ravunge roads
- Various construction vehicles
- Magnetic Tiles
- Chalk marker
- Wooden Dump Truck Tray (AW and Collective)
- Felt hearts (Sewing Seeds Play)
- Satin hearts (Dollarama)
- Wood letter blocks (Birch and Bark Natural Wood)
My thoughts
This activity turned out great on an entertainment and learning level. Here are my thoughts
Fun – High
The kids (3.5 yrs and 5.5 yrs old) had a great time with this activity. My son loved driving the vehicles through the popcorn, putting them in garages and everything vehicle related. While my daughter does not get as excited about vehicles, she loved the letter recognition aspect of it and found plenty to keep her attention.
Engagement Time – 45mins + 45mins + 30mins
We left this tray out for 3 days. The popcorn kernels didn’t make much of a mess and were big enough that I could pick them off the floor if a few stray ones made it off the tray. The first night the tray was out, the kids were most interested in driving vehicles, scooping popcorn and putting vehicles in the garages. The next day, they became more interested in the letter recognition part of the activity. On day 3, the kids started thinking of new ways to use the popcorn and it became feed for the farm animals. Once too much of the popcorn started getting out of the tray for my liking, I cleaned up the activity.
Cost – Medium
I used about $15 (cdn) worth of popcorn, and a small package of satin hearts from Dollarama. Everything else we had in our toy and sensory activity supplies. The roads from IKEA are very reasonably priced and construction vehicles are available in dollar stores.
Effort – Medium
The activity took me about 20 minutes to set up and after 3 days, I did have to pick up some popcorn off the floor, but otherwise I didn’t think this activity required too much effort.
Final thoughts
This tray worked well for multiple days of play. It offered enough variety to keep the kids attention and was clean enough for me to leave out in the playroom. It was great for catching my vehicle-loving-son’s attention and the different letter recognition activities were a draw for my daughter. I think it was a successful activity and would definitely repeat it or do something very similar again.
