Cars in the classroom? Why not?

If you are like most of the teachers in our area right now, you have a short time to get your classroom ready. So it is nice to know that there is plenty of car stuff available ready-made.

 Trend's Racing to Success set has plenty of car pieces for writing student names, and it'll fit on your door. You can also use it for behavior management or to keep track of progress toward a goal -- memorizing the multiplication tables, for example.

Trend has a passel of race car stuff -- desk plates, nametags, bookmarks, stickers, and more, with checkerboards and trophies and realistic racecars. You can get your classroom put together quickly in one trip with this look. The focus of the bulletin board set is on success, so it's a great one to start the year with.

The D. J. Inkers "Critters 'n' Cars" series is a cute take on the car theme for the younger pups. This one also has lots of accessories -- computer paper, nametags, desk plates, borders, and so on. The bulletin board set is perfect for colors, with labels and all, and the cut outs make a great sorting center.

Speaking of sorting, the Learning Resources "Mini-Motor Counters" can bring the whole transportation theme into the class, or you can pick out just the cars for color sorting.

Bulletin board sayings for a car theme might include "Race to Success" (those words come with the Trend bulletin board set, but you can do it yourself and add your subject, year, or goal), "Rev Up Your Writing" (again there's a ready-made set with those words, but you could rev up whatever needs revving in your classroom), "We're in the Driver's Seat," "We're Winners!" "Going the Extra Mile," "Zoom into..." third grade or what have you, "Join the Race," "Taking the High Road," "On the Road Again" or "On the Road to..." your goal or subject.

Race tracks or maps make excellent ways to chart progress toward goals. A big road map with flags can show progress, from the number of pups who have memorized their multiplication tables to the steps you've completed toward your National History Day projects.

Once you've got the room decorated, try out a few road-related instructional ideas:

• Work on standards about communities by building a paper city around the walls at floor level. Brainstorm about the kinds of buildings people living in a city would need, the kinds of green space or other open space you need, the transportation options, and all the other issues appropriate for your grade, and plan a model city. Or recreate the town where you live. You can do both, and then compare the two and write up a proposal to improve your town. Send it to your mayor or city council. This project can be simple or sophisticated, depending on the ages of the pups and the standards you want to address.
• Use recyclables to build cars. Juice boxes, cans, and milk cartons can make great car bodies, and jar lids can be wheels. A lot of choices of materials will up the creativity quotient. Work with the class ahead of time to develop a rubric for this project. In Arkansas history lessons, we've done this with wagons, and the requirement was that the wagon had to make it all the way down the sidewalk (or it could be a hall) with a potato pioneer in place. Lots of issues about force and motion come up in this lesson.
• Keep on with physical science and bring math in too, by having speed trials with the cars you made. You can also use toy cars. I like to let the students vary the conditions as they choose, leaving a very free atmosphere for exploration, but you can also tailor the experiments to a particular point you want to make. Either way, this PDF file gives a great form for collecting and analyzing data. Here is a complete lesson plan on the subject.
• Here is a PDF for building an air-powered car from Engineer's Week. From the same excellent source, a lesson on how to calculate the number of lemons required to power a car.
• Mapping is a natural connection for this theme. Compare road maps with political and topographical maps, plan a road trip, or study the interstate highway system.
• The word "racecar" happens to be a palindrome. Kick off your vocabulary study by finding all the other palindromes you can.
• Arkansas roads have a place in our history. The stretch from Winslow to Ft. Smith was considered the worst part of the entire Butterfield Trail. The Good Roads Movement (started by cyclists) was an important part of the 1920s tourist trade. Read here about the roads and highways of Arkansas in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
• Gather 'round and sing Woody Guthrie's "Take You Riding in my Car." Find the lyrics here. See Bill Wolfe's YouTube performance of the song here.