Children, too, are often swept along with our busy lifestyle and car journeys become a regular feature of their daily lives.
As well as looking at cars, a topic on transport provides an ideal opportunity for focusing on other healthier and environmentally friendly ways of travelling.
During the project, we can raise children's awareness of pollution by talking about exhaust fumes and pointing out other travel options such as going by bicycle or walking. It may also be appropriate to look at how using public transport can help to reduce the number of cars on our already congested roads.
Learning experiences
This topic aims to offer children learning experiences across the curriculum - although activities are particularly rich in opportunities for developing children's knowledge and understanding of the world.
The activities planned for this topic have been organised into sections (road, water, air and rail transport) and look predominantly, but not exclusively, at the transportation of passengers.
As in all good early years practice, children's own experiences should be the starting point for planning activities related to transport and these will be diverse within any early years group.
Effective communication with parents and carers will enable practitioners to find out about an individual child's home experiences and will also enable them to share information about children's interests in the setting.
It is always a good idea at the beginning of any project to inform parents and carers about the aims of the topic and the activities that it will include. This information can be communicated via letter, poster, and, of course, through informal discussion.
Included in the information should be suggestions about how parents can support their children's learning out of the setting.
It is likely that most or all children will have first-hand experience of travelling in cars or buses. Some will also have been on train or plane journeys and will have a wealth of knowledge to offer others.
Wherever possible, practitioners should aim to extend and broaden children's first-hand experiences by planning visits to, for example, an airport, local train station or bus terminal, or short journeys on buses and trains.
Visitors to the setting can also help to enrich children's experience of transport and it is worth inviting local taxi or bus drivers to come to the setting to talk about their work.
Role play Imaginative and role play is a powerful context for young, active learners and opportunities for children to explore transport and road safety through a range of role-play and small-world environments are included (see 'Flights of Fancy', page 20).
ICT
ICT is often an area of the curriculum with which practitioners feel unsure, and sometimes the inclusion of a computer in the setting is as far as planning for ICT opportunities goes.
The activities and experiences that we offer children should always be meaningful to them and the key to planning appropriately is to observe the world we live in. ICT is part of our everyday lives and there are countless opportunities for us to teach children about the purposes for and uses of technology.
Again, role play can be a very effective way of presenting these opportunities to children and practical ideas are discussed in 'All systems go' (see page 19).
Design and technology
Discovering how things work is fascinating to children and a topic on transport can be an ideal time to focus on children's designing and making skills. Vehicles function in a variety of ways and by looking at a few simple principles, children can make their own working models (see 'Assembly lines', page 18).
Reading for a purpose
There are numerous good quality fiction books that will support this topic, but it is important also to give information books a high profile in the setting. Practitioners should also think about offering practical, 'real life' reasons for reading, which could include providing material such as road maps, train timetables, car handbooks and car service records.
Jane Drake is a partnership advisory teacher in Leeds and author of Organising Play in the Early Years (David Fulton Publishers, 15)