Teaching Heart's
Cars Theme Unit

Below teachers will find ideas with a Cars theme for your classroom & parents will find ideas to use while they create a Cars birthday party theme!

Free Cars Printables From Teaching Heart

Cars Fruit Snacks Graph - Graph the candy from the movie
Sorting Disney Cars - Sort pictures from the movie and count
Cars Word Search - Free Time Fun or Great start to a party!

Great Cars Books

Poems and Songs on a Car Theme

Awesome Disney Pixar Cars Products from Amazon

Ideas for the Classroom

Art Activity: MAKE CAR TRACKS
Pour a puddle of paint on a grocery tray. Drive a car through the paint, and then drive it on some paper.

Science Activity: CARS IN A BUBBLE
Blow a big bubble on the counter top. Dip a toy car into bubble solution and drive it into the bubble. You will have a car in a bubble.

Yummy Activity: CAR SANDWHICH
You can make cars out of sandwiches too. You use a dinner roll instead of bread. I use carrot circles for the wheels but you could use anything round and about that size. We usually put racing stripes on with cream cheese or mustard and sometimes we even make a little driver out of a radish.

Art Activity: CAR COLLAGE
Invite the children to cut out pictures of cars from old magazines -make a collage.

Thinking Skills: DISCUSS CARS
Discuss why we have cars - what other types of vehicles are there?

Math: Graphing
They are currently making CARS Gummy Fruit Snacks. You could graph the candy in the bag. If you can't find the CARS brand, you can buy the matchbox fruit snacks and use those.

Click here to download graphing sheet to use with the CARS Fruit Snacks

Math: Sorting
Sort the characters and answer questions about the group.

Click here for a sorting activity

Phonics: Cars and Reading
Have the kids bring toy cars from home to share. Help them arrange the cars in a letter C!

Have students match the Cars characters to the letter their name starts with. Print the letters S, M, D, F, on cards. Print the characters Sally, Mater, Doc, and Filmore on cards. Students match the letter to the character.

Imagine:
Kids love to make car noises. Let them following you along a imaginary road and pretend to be cars. Go fast and "zoom" go slowly, stop quickly and "eek"
as brakes work - go around lots of curves - putt-putt-putt with enginetrouble

Decor:
racetrack on the door or in the hallway with a title welcoming the students. For example, "We are on the right track", "Racing toward a Great Year", and "Mrs. G's class are all winners" .
Have students desk tags made in the shape of cars and have teams related to cars characters(Team Mater, team McQueen, Team Sally...).

Use a graphic of a car on a numberline to track the number of days of schools. Move the car each day to show which day you are on.

RACING FOR READING: As a reading bulletin board: Decorate as a racetrack. Give each student a car character of their choice. Place the students name or picture on their car. Have markers for each book read.

LICENSE PLATE RUBBINGS: Using old license plates (or plate on cars in the parking lot) allow students to do rubbings of the plates. Provide paper and crayons for the rubbings

CARS TAKE HOME BAG:
Print out graphics from the movie onto iron on paper. Iron the images onto a bag. In the bag place the read along book CARS. Place a Cars Matchbox in the bag. Place a Cars game in the bag.

Ideas from other teachers:

I did a unit on cars (vehicles) years ago in Pre-K and remember a few things.
-we walked to a street that was fairly busy, sat down in 2 groups (aide helped) and tallied the vehicles that drove by. A chart was divided into 4 columns with the headings, cars, vans, suv, trucks. The kids would call out the type of vehicle that drove by , and I would do my best to tally each one. Then we returned to class and compared the results.
-kids brought boxes of any size in and we used paint, markers, a variety of lids, and collage material to "create" a vehicle.
-I drew an outline of a VW- looking car, and the kids decorated it, and added people. I wrote on the car as they answered the question: Where would you like to go in a car, and who would you go with? We made a book.

Just a few ideas, Hope this helps.
Linda

At my school we do a transportation unit. At the end of the unit we have a transportation parade. We have the parade at the end of January, but start preparing the parents for in in December. This is a project completed at home. We ask the parents to start thinking of ideas and to save a box during the holiday season. Each family takes the box and makes it into any form of transportation. We send home measurements- they all need to fit through doors. The students wear the boxes. We have done this for the past 3 years. Everyone loves it. The students all walk around the school wearing them as the other students stand outside their doors cheering them on. We live by Route 66, so we teach them the song and it plays through the loudspeaker system. It was great watching the movie Cars...they had our town's name as a bumper sticker! (and the soundtrack has a better Route 66 song). We also go to the local musuem and look at how transportation has changed from the past to the present. Just some things we do.
Jeanne

Birthday Party Ideas

*Cars Shirt: Make a personalized shirt as a gift for a CARS fan or make one as a favor for each guest. Below are examples of shirts I made for my son and his friend. I just find the graphics I wish to use and print them on iron on paper. Then I follow the directions on the paper and iron on the graphics.

*Cars Bag - Similar to the shirt. Find graphics you want to use and iron them on to a bag. You can put car related gifts into the bag for the birthday boy or girl. You can get the smaller tote bags on Oriental Trading (they come in bulk) and make favor bags for each guest. I have done this for a Thomas Theme (click here to view)!!!

*Note Pads - buy notepads at the dollar store and print graphics on sticky paper for a notepad for each guest. You can view the Thomas notepads by clicking here (same idea!).

Click here for the publisher notepad template I made.

CARS YUMMY!!!

*Invitation Idea
Here is a Sample of an invitation I created for my sons party. It is a postcard and prints 4 per page. After you print the first side, turn the paper over and print page 2. Address the card and send it to the people you wish to invite to the party!

*Candy Bar Wrapper Favor

Wrap a Hershey's Bar in this wrapper and stick in your favor bag.
You can print this PDF to use. Click Here!

CARS CD FAVOR

Each year for my sons birthday I do a CD of his favorite songs to include in the party favor bag.
This is how the CD turned out the year I did cars!

Links to more