Moments from the Big Green Chair: Sputter, Sputter, Sput

One of our recent finds at the library was this book, Sputter, Sputter, Sput! by Babs Bell.  It is a very simple story about a driver and a little red car zooming around town, until the car runs out of gas (enter the "sputter, sputter, sput").  So they fill it up (gurgle, gurgle, glug) and zoom around town some more.  Despite how simple it is, my almost 3 year-old loved this book.  He wanted to read it again and again, and he enjoyed making the "gurgle, gurgle" and "zoom vroom" sounds for me.  There are a lot of fun activities you can do based on this book!

One thing we did was make an "R is for road" craft.  Here is K doing some gluing.

The finished product.  We made the "R" into the road, and I helped Kyle make lines in the middle with a white crayon.  I cut out a little person and car (that looked like the one from the book) and K glued them on.  His favorite part was gluing on the eye.  Then we made little houses by the road, and a hill like the one in the book.  We talked about the shapes of the houses as we glued them on.

K's favorite activity was acting out the story!  His car was a laundry basket, and I placed Baby J's steering wheel toy in the front (but you could improvise with a frisbee or anything round, or make your own steering wheel out of a paper plate with a hole cut in the middle).

I  pushed his "car" all around the living room, until . . . "sputter, sputter, sput" it ran out of gas.  So, he had to get a fill up.  We happen to have a gas pump toy, but you could make your own out of a cereal box like Ali did here.

I also made a road on the carpet using masking tape, and we added blocks to make tunnels and hills.  K had fun acting out the story some more with his little cars.

We skipped the brushes and used cars to paint instead!

The story repeats the words "up and down, all around the town" and "uphill and downhill" a couple of times, so it's also a great opportunity to do some "up" and "down" activities.  Here is K demonstrating "up"!