Construction toy vehicles are popular among kids today. Almost every kid’s home will hoard a set of JCBs or other builder vehicle toys. However, I mostly see children play with these kind of vehicles inside their homes in the same way they would play with any other car and bike toys.
All the construction toys are designed for a specific purpose. Most of these toys come with movable parts in order for the toy to perform a function. And that’s exactly what children need to play with and learn from these toys! This is a reminder post to parents about the sensory stimulation, learning and fun they can bring in their children’s’ playtime using construction vehicle toys. A simple digger/excavator along with a dump/dumper truck is all enough to create interesting plays, if not for other machines.
This post specifically is about Toy Dump Trucks. If you have a toy dump truck or planning to buy one, here is some helpful information to teach and guide your kids to play:
What to teach kids about Dump Trucks?
Children might not be eager to learn heavy theories behind how the real trucks work. Yet, we can casually input a few specifications about the real-life model toys they play with. In this case of a dump truck, you can explain to them that in construction sites, dump trucks are used for carrying materials like sand or gravel. You can show them a few important parts unique to dump trucks like the open-box bed, the hinge with which it is attached at the rear end and the hydraulic piston which moves the box bed up and down. Demonstrate to them how at the site of delivery, the box bed slants upwards, making the material in the bed to be dumped on the ground.
How to practically make them learn about Dump Trucks?
After they’ve played with the toy for once or if you prefer, even before they begin playing, show them images of real-life dump trucks.
You can make them watch videos about real dump trucks. If that doesn’t interest them, you can also make them watch how other kids play with toy dump trucks. Here’s a sample video of Vihaan playing with his toy dump truck.
Something that children get excited about is when they see these vehicles in close reality. Once, during our car drive, we spotted a construction work where a dump truck was unloading gravel. Vihaan was excited about it and wanted to watch it a little longer. We parked the car nearby and made him watch the entire dumping process. To us, it might be an ordinary day-to-day activity that happens on the road sides. However, for children it is a good opportunity to learn and relate to their play times. So don’t ignore such chances of getting your children explore real-life learning.
How to make their plays interesting?
- Take them to a beach: Playing on the beach sand could be one of the most interesting ways for kids to play with dump trucks. They will have a larger space to move around freely. And lots of sand to load and unload from the trucks without the problem of making the play area untidy. You can also make a small pit and fill it with water. You can then make them carry sand and dump on the pit, covering the water pit completely.
- Sand play area: If you don’t live near a beach, you can take them to a sand play area. It is as good as playing on the beach sand except that the background scenic presence will be missing. You can check the video above where Vihaan plays in our sand play area with his toy dump truck.
- Play at home: If you can’t make it to the beach or the sand play, provide them safe and non-hazardous material which they can use to load and unload from the toy dump truck. Small pebbles which we use in the fish tank or smaller toys like building blocks and toy alphabets are a few good enough items.
- Interactive Plays: To make this activity fun, you can be the loader while your kid takes care of driving and dumping. You can make pathways within which the truck can travel. You can make them ride the truck from one room to another and create a specific area or holder for dumping.
Playing with dump trucks is much fun! Explore it with your little workers.
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nice post!!
Thank you!
Pleasure
I like your play ideas. Like you say its important to show kids how to play with any new toy they gets. Lots of times we just give toys to kids and expect them to play but they may have never seen how that toy in real life works so may not know how to play with it.
Thank you. That’s exactly I try to write about in my blog.