Hot Wheels Heaven

In 2014 I received a Hot Wheels FUNdamentals Learning Kit for my classroom. I was given a fabulous set of cars and tracks in exchange for a blog review.

My kit included an educational Activity Book, a CD with lots of lesson plans, cars, and tracks.

Check out all these gorgeous little cars!

I introduced the kit with a game of “20 Questions”. The kids had to ask me yes/no questions (we called them clue questions) until they had gathered enough information to figure out what I had in the box.

You can imagine how crazy excited they were when they found out we were going to be learning with Hot Wheels cars.

Before we began any of the lessons I let the kids play with the cars and tracks every day for a week. They worked well together and had lots of fun racing the cars. I didn’t help with the track building at all! It actually took them awhile to figure it all out but when they did they were very proud of themselves.

The first lesson we did involved visualization. I read a script about two cars racing against each other and the kids drew their pictures. This lesson was included in the package and  everyone loved it.

Next up was writing a descriptive paragraph of one of the cars.

We started off by looking at our cars (whole group setting) and talking about the kinds of words we would use to describe them.

Then everyone went off and filled in this sheet (this wasn’t included in the package).

The kids came up with some great words!

The next step was writing a short paragraph. This was the first time writing a descriptive piece so it was heavily guided.

To begin, we brainstormed some interesting lead sentences.

Everybody chose one and wrote it down.

Then we reconvened and talked about how their paragraphs had to include all the descriptive words they used on their brainstorming sheets.

This turned out to be very difficult for half the class so we met as a smaller group and worked through it together.

For a first attempt I thought everyone did really well.

The Hot Wheels cars and tracks are now part of centre time and are very popular…no surprise there!

I’m also going to be breaking the kids into groups of six and challenging them to make the fastest track and ramp possible. We’re then going to measure how far their cars go. I imagine we’ll have to use the hallway for this. It will be fun to see what the kids come up with!

Then later in the year we’ll be using them as part of our community unit when we create a little town using boxes.

If you’re hoping to add some constructive, educational play into your day, I highly recommend Hot Wheels.

Have fun!