Ride the Bus

I love to think up ideas for teaching young children. While I was playing with my four year old nephew it occurred to me that the Fisher Price Little People cars and buses could help teach a valuable lesson in why we need to take the bus instead of individual cars.

First we parked five cars in front of five houses and had a person get in each one and drive on the road. That was a lot of cars on the road.

Then we pretended that it was the next day and had the bus stop for each of these people. They could all ride together, using only one vehicle.

Buses can transport more people at a time than cars.

We also talked about the number of people getting on and off, using addition and subtraction in a very concrete way. His older cousin, 6 years old, loved being the Supervisor who got to keep a record of the people getting on and off. She wrote the number sentences 1+1=2. 2-1=3 etc.

Playtime is a great time for teaching.