Fun with things that go – Playgroup

Vehicle play with friends at playgroup offers many opportunities to help your child learn to wait, to share, and to take turns. This builds your child’s social and emotional skills.

Did you know?

Social skills and cooperation are encouraged as children of different ages play together, sharing trucks, trains or sandpit vehicles at playgroup. The social skills learned at playgroup can last a lifetime!

Add language

Use language for sharing, negotiation and fair play. Talking through how to share a limited number of highly desired toys e.g. ride on bikes/scooters, trains for the train track etc., can help build the children’s language for working out fair play for themselves. It also helps them learn to cope with these situations.

Other development

Try using vehicles with blocks and other building toys. Children can be encouraged to build bridges and ramps out of blocks or even baking trays or hardcover books! This builds skills for science, technology, engineering and maths! Include some toy people or animals to encourage talking!!

Variations

Children can make a train or bus out of chairs and boxes. Providing the materials and inspiring creativity with a story or song can be a great way to kick start group imaginative play.

Play with vehicles can take many different forms. Taking toy vehicles outside can prompt all sorts of exploration as the car flies down the slide and travels through the sand and over a log or branch. You could have a ‘car wash’ at the end of the session! This helps children to understand the routine of cleaning up.

Across the ages

All the activities listed on our “Play Ideas” page can be applied across different age groups. See how backyard exploring can be fun for babies, toddlers and children.

Activities listed under “playgroup” are suitable for groups of children of various ages.
They provide opportunities for early learning and social play.