If your child loves playing with trucks, I have the best toddler gross motor activity to share with you! This one is great to get your little ones moving but it is also a great way to get practice color matching, too!
Toddler Gross Motor Activity
Gross motor skills are important for toddlers because they involve the use of large muscle groups in the body and are essential for physical development and overall health. Developing gross motor skills helps toddlers to improve their balance, coordination, strength, and endurance, which are all important for activities such as running, jumping, climbing and playing. Gross motor skills also play a crucial role in developing fine motor skills, cognitive and social-emotional development. Therefore, it is important for parents and caregivers to encourage and support toddlers in developing their gross motor skills through play, exercise and exploration.
Gross Motor Set Up
For this one, your toddler will take their dump trucks and fill them with pom poms then drive them down the tape road and dump them on the correct color.
To set up, you will need to grab the paper to match all the pom pom colors that you plan on using. Then, using painter’s tape, you will make lines that your dump truck can drive down.
Gross Motor Activity
To start this one, I would have my toddler or preschool pick out pom poms that are all the same color and place them into their dump truck. If they do not understand this concept (this is a hard one to at first), I would pick out a couple of pom poms of the same color and then ask them to find the one that matches. Make sure to say “Find the ___ pom pom.” so they are hearing the color word and seeing the color.
Once they have their dump truck full, they will find the matching colored paper and drive their truck down the path. This is a great way to get those muscles moving and also a great way to identify which path they should be taking to get their truck where it needs to go.
Learning colors is a tricky concept and will take some time, but making it fun with this gross motor activity will make the process fun!
