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Looking for easy lesson plans and activities for Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle? Here’s an easy to guide to our favorite little blue truck activities. 

Little Blue Truck Book Activities

My grandson’s new favorite book is Little Blue Truck (and all the sequels). If you haven’t read the book, it’s a super cute story where the little blue truck leads his animal friends to help a dump truck out of the mud. 

This book is a fun way to combine childrens’ favorite things like vehicles and animals with a heart warming story about helping your friends. And young readers love the illustrations by Jill McElmurry. This New York Times Bestseller is a great book to create any week’s theme lesson plan around.

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Reading the Book 

This is one of our favorite books to read because of the many recognizable characters and fun sounds throughout the book. But the simple little blue truck story is a great way to talk about so many important topics with young children. 

The important things to point out during the book are how the little blue truck is nice to all his friends, and how his friends come to his rescue. We emphasize doing and saying nice things using words such as ‘kind’, ‘polite’, ‘helpful’, ‘thoughtful’, ‘loving’, and, of course, ‘nice’. Then, ask your child who they can do nice things for or say kind things to with real examples.

This is a great way to start discussing emotions with children. With my grandson, we talked about both him saying nice things to others as well as others saying nice things to him, and how that made him feel.

Another great way to enjoy this book is watching the video of it being read. Check it out here. 

Sensory Play with Little Blue Truck 

One of our favorite ways to incorporate activities into book lesson plans is with sensory play! This way the children can still be learning about the book, but also building fine motor skills, staying active, and encouraging creativity.

There’s really endless possibilities when it comes to sensory play for young learners, but here are our three favorite to go with the Little Blue Truck. 

Driving in the Mud Activity

To really help this story come alive through imaginary play for young children, our favorite activity is set up your own ‘mud’ scene. All this takes in a little brown paint, a truck or two, and some animals. This combines the basic concepts of the book with extremely beneficial messy play. 

First, we covered our table in green paper to look like grass. Next, we added a few piles of brown paint to be the mud.

Then, you’ll want to add some trucks and other vehicles that can be driven through the mud. Children will love to make tracks with the wheels of the toy vehicles in the paint! Encourage them to drive all over the paper. 

After some driving, the vehicles ‘get stuck’ and their animal friends have to come save them! Get out some little plastic or wooden animals to push the vehicles out of the mud. My grandson also loves to make tracks with the animals in the paint, too. 

Our best advice is to choose toys that are easily washable. Even better if you have a little blue truck and a big green toad toy, but even that’s not necessary! Check out all our best info on painting without a brush here.

Farm Sensory Bin

The perfect way to incorporate messy and sensory play with this book if your don’t want to break out the paint is with a sensory bin! Sensory bins are one of our favorite activities to do with young children because there are so many benefits for development. 

If you’re intimidated by making a sensory bin or the thought of the possible mess, check out our full guide to sensory bins here. With my grandson, we taught him how to use them and took a few key precautions, so the mess is kept to a minimum. 

To create a farm sensory bin, the possibilities are really endless, and there’s really no wrong way to do it. You can probably use what you already have at home. Here’s our farm sensory bin that we made from dirt and rice. 

Then, just add in a little blue truck to this fun sensory activity!

Animals on the Road Activity

Another one of my grandson’s favorite activities already involves animals along a road, so we just adapted it to the Little Blue Truck! For this activity, all you need is masking or painters tape, plastic animals, and a truck toy.

We have the full activity here. Just add in a truck driving down the road. Then, you can make your our fun little scene of the truck driving by all kinds of animals on the road! 

This is a great activity that will work with all farm books. It’s also perfect for any time of year, lesson plan, rainy day or holiday activity because you can change it to fit whatever you need. 

The Importance of these Fun Activities

As with all child’s play we like to do, the importance of the activities is not in the end result or even getting the story ‘right’. The importance comes in the free play that allows children the chance to use their imagination and explore their creativity. 

Don’t stress if your child forgets the original story and makes up their own in any of these activities. Or they may not even want the trucks or the animals at all. All your can do is follow the activity plan set-up, and, then let them take the lead. 

More Little Blue Truck Books

We also love Good Night Little Blue Truck and Little Blue Truck’s Springtime, especially if your child is into farm animals and animal sounds. They also have some fun holiday themed books like Little Blue Truck’s Halloween, Little Blue Truck’s Christmas, and Little Blue Truck’s Valentine. There’s loads of fun activities you can do with all these books!

You can find the original Little Blue Truck book here.  We hope you have so much fun with the little blue truck just like we did!