Learning Beyond Classrooms - Back To Roots - Cowshed Visit - Waldorf Inspired Field Trip - Kids

The world is our classroom and field trips are a core part of homeschooling & daily lives. As a Waldorf inspired family, I try to engage my son with the natural world whenever possible and give him real life experiences of things rather than just reading books or watching videos. At least for the things that are available to us city dwellers. We visit cowshed often, check out what we see & do there. 

We often (at least twice a week) go to the cowshed to feed the cows. Today we also got a chance to meet these little calves, the youngest one is just one month old!!! My son loves feeding the cows. He has also seen how those people milk the cows. This place also has some horses. A rare thing to see when you live in a city, but fortunately this place is near to our house.

With my son's never ending question list, we have discussed how we use milk, it's products, what cows & horses eat, why do they put horse shoe on horses' feet, how cow dung is used, why do we worship cows in India, what do they eat, etc etc. We understood what is waste for we human beings (like stalks of grains like wheat, jowar, sugarcane, corn etc) become food for cows & horses. And how the waste material of cows like urine & cowdung is so beneficial for human beings.

All this helps toddlers to know more about animals, develop love for them, understand life on a farm, about food etc by experiencing it, rather than just learning from the books.

A beautiful way to connect with mother nature on an everyday basis!

We have also made cowdung cakes & dhoop batti (incense sticks) using cow dung & other natural ingredients & these days we are using them at home to purify air. I will share its tutorial soon!

Do share with me the recent field trips you have done with your child! Would love to get more ideas!

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What Is Lunar & Solar Eclipse - DIY Model & Activity - Astronomy For Kids

With the recent rare phenomenon of Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse, kids have been pretty amazed with the eclipse phenomenon. This is a perfect opportunity to make a hands-on model & activity showing how exactly the solar & lunar eclipse occur. This DIY solar system model is super simple & you can make use of things at home to make it. This is a perfect Astronomy starter for kids.

Solar system models are a great way to demonstrate how an eclipse works, and can be constructed with varying complexity for all ages. By setting up the sun, moon and Earth, parents and teachers can demonstrate the phases of the moon as well as an eclipse.


Things Required

• Sphere 1 - Sponge ball or yellow smiley ball or an orange
• Sphere 2 ( smaller than sphere 1) - Ping pong ball or lemon or small thermacol ball
• Wire that can be bent easily but is stable enough. I used pipe cleaner
• Aluminium foil
• Red gelatine paper
• Stack of books or an elevated platform
• Something to put the sponge ball on, I used a diya lying around at home
• Torch

How to Setup

• Sphere 1 represents the earth & sphere 2 represents the moon. I used a sponge globe for sphere 1 and a small thermacol ball for sphere 2.
• Wrap aluminium foil over sphere 2 so that it reflects light falling on it in a better way. Moon reflects the light falling on it. This step is optional though.
• Pierce a little hole & insert the wire (I used pipe cleaner) into the earth, bend it at right angle, then again bend it at right angle & then insert it into the moon. Align the wire such that earth & moon are in front of each other with their equators aligned horizontally. Refer the picture for clarity.
• Place the earth on a stand, I used a diya
• Take a stack of books or an elevated platform (I used a small stool) & put a torch on it. Torch represents the sun. Adjust the height of the book stack such that the torch light falls at the equator of the earth.
• Switch off the lights of the room & switch on the torch.

• With this setup, you can explain first how the earth goes round the sun by moving the earth manually. 
• You can also explain rotation of earth & tell how days & nights happen when sunlight falls on a specific part of the earth. 
• Now by taking the moon round the earth, you can how how differently the moon shines at different alignments because of the angle at which sunlight is falling on it. You can explain moon phases with this setup. 
• Now to explain lunar eclipse, you can align sun, earth & moon in a line respectively. Of course you have to revise your own concepts first before you start explaining verbally about this setup, kids have deep strange questions!

• In a similar way, you can explain the solar eclipse as well.
• To show the blood moon in some sense, you can take red gelatine paper and put it in front of the torch. However this is not the real explanation of blood moon. It occurs because earth’s atmosphere absorbs all the colours in the spectrum instead of red & hence very little percentage of sun’s rays (in red spectrum) reach the moon during eclipse & it appears to be red.

Hope you liked this simple to set up activity to explain earth’s rotation & revolution, moon’s revolution, moon’s phases, lunar & solar eclipses.

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Why Does It Rain? Hands-on Science (STEM) Activity For Kids (VLOG)

Kids learn the most by experiences & experiments. And it is best to answer their day to day questions by relevant activities whenever possible. Read to know how I answered my toddler's bunch of questions about rain during the rainy season. In this simple DIY science experiment (STEM), he understood why does it rain. Let us honor & fuel the curiosity of these little ones!

Watch the video below to see my 27 month old son doing a simple science experiment to understand why does it rain. This was in response to his tons of questions about rain during the rainy season! This is a super sensory fun exercise & a hands-on science experiment - STEM for kids.





You can find the entire playlist of our STEM activities HERE & I will keep populating the playlist when I add a new STEM video! And do not forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you never miss a new video.

You might want to read this step by step guide about STEM toys in general & find some really good recommendations HERE.

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Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

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This Diwali Gift Learning - Diwali Gift Ideas For Children - Open Ended Learning Experiences

Are you looking for Diwali gift ideas for children this year? Are you bored of buying the same old sweets or crackers or clothes as gifts & looking for better gift options that kids will remember in the years to come? Then do something different this year & gift learning, memories & experiences to kids! Read on to know more.

Diwali, the most important and widely celebrated festival for Hindus, commemorates the victory of good over evil. It is the festive time when families get together, everyone indulges on sweets, lit up diyas, illuminate homes, children burst fire crackers and everyone has a great time.

I just love Diwali! It is my favorite time of the year because of the positivity, cheerfulness & festival fervor in the air! It is customary to gift sweets, crackers, clothes etc to kids in our friends & family members. Why not do something different this year? Let us gift learning to kids. Sounds different? Let me tell you how this can be done in so many ways. I am listing some learning gift ideas for kids because at the end of the day, kids remember experiences & memories and that gives them learning for life. They do not remember that they got chocolates & sweets as gifts!


Excursions

Kids love outdoors, be it a simple visit to a nearby park. This Diwali let us keep them away from screens by gifting them our time & take them out for excursions. Depending upon the age & interest of your child, you can take him/her to a green farm, plant nursery, dam, boating, camping, fort, trek, adventure sports trip, amusement park or even just a long drive in the outskirts of the city. Nature is the best teacher & kids learn the best when they are amidst nature.

Field Trips

Did you know even a simple trip to a post office or a super market can be a learning experience for a child? You can even take your child to a temple over a hill, a fire station, museum or any such place. My toddler loves visiting new places. It gives us a new dimension to our never-ending conversations. And a holistic learning is already going on during such outings.


Books, Books & More Books

Nothing beats the smell & sight of books for me. They are never enough for me, just the space is less to store them at home. I have hundreds of books for myself & my toddler too & I still do not stop buying! Gift your child a bundle of books this Diwali. Let us raise readers! If you are confused which books to buy for your child, I have put up an exhaustive list of Diwali themed books HERE that you can choose from. Apart from this I have a bunch of book reviews & recommendations too on various topics. So go ahead & take a pick yourself!


DIY & Diwali Activities & Crafts

It is holiday time for the kids & what better than bonding with them over DIY fun Diwali activities. There so many more activities that I am going to do with my son this year. Also, pinterest is full of Diwali activity & craft ideas that you can browse through. If you are working or do not have enough ideas or motivation, you can send your child in Diwali camps happening at many places these days. Let your child soak into the festivities and learn a lot of things too.

Open-Ended & Free Play Learning Experiences

I cannot stress much upon the importance of open-ended & free play. It boosts creativity, confidence, self esteem of the child & the learning that follows organically is incomparable. We have a lot of open-ended toys & a brand that we personally love for its quality, designing & precision is Skola Toys. Toys are the best friends & the best teachers, so it is very important to make an informed choice of what kind of toys you buy for a child.

You might want to read this article - 6 things to consider when choosing toys & what is wrong with today's toys.

The team & designers at Skola Toys believe that play leads to exploration, exploration leads to discovery and discovery leads to learning. Skola toys stimulate the child’s senses by opening up a fascinating world of colours, shapes, numbers, alphabets, science, geography and more. Children between 0 and 8 have an extremely high rate of brain development that constantly seeks information through activity. For these young Skolars, activity, work and play are all synonymous.

We love Skola toys because they are made of natural material (wood) which gives a rich sensory input to kids. They are self correcting in most cases, which means that there is no need for an adult intervention to decide whether the child is working with the material correctly or not. They are open-ended, interactive & facilitates imagination, which is very important during early years. Each toy is targeted very beautifully for a particular skill like fine motor or emotional intelligence or math or language or science (more on science in my next blog post) etc. Moreover, the concept of "learning journeys designed as play" by Skola Toys is amazing & it gives us a concrete path which we can follow to decide which toy/material to get for the child depending on where the child is in his learning journey. Read more about "learning journeys" HERE.

What more can I ask for to gift a child this Diwali? A wholesome sensory playing & learning experience, and in addition to this, their products are sustainable too. No plastics! Good for earth, less guilt for parents.

Here are some amazing open-ended Skola toys that you can consider for gifting kids this Diwali.



If you are unsure of what to gift to your family members' kids, then Skola has an option of GIFT CARD as well.

You might also want to check out more articles & reviews of mine on Skola Toys HERE.

So this Diwali, gift learning to kids! Let us change the trend and do something valuable for our kids, our future generation!

I hope this post gave you some unusual Diwali gift ideas for kids this year. If you have any more ideas, I would love to hear them!

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Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

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Top 7 Benefits Of Travelling With Kids

Father & Son Exploring The Sea In Goa

I travelled a lot during my entire childhood, thanks to my parents who loved travelling & knew how important & beneficial it is for children to travel. Be it an infant, a toddler, a teen or an adult, a family vacation or an outing is always an opportunity to learn & evolve.  We also travel a lot with our toddler and love the experiences, learnings & the questions that our toddler comes up with! Read about some real kick-ass benefits of travelling with kids in this article.

Today, I am so happy to have Devishobha share her thoughts on this topic. Read on what she has to tell you about the benefits of travelling with kids - 

1. They become naturally more inclusive

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow”- Anita Desai. 

Children who travel soak up multiple cultures and practices. They become deeply empathetic individuals- one of the most important traits that directly correlated with success in adult life. Needless to say, children who are exposed to multiple cultures mould into confident individuals who are more socially more adept - because they hone their ability for acceptance and tolerance.

2. Travel fuels their insatiable curiosity

Travelling puts us in contact with myriad fields like archeology, art, culture, music, food, languages, tourist highlights - not to mention the hundreds of other travellers who criss-cross in and out of your life. There is literally no better way for an immersive learning experience.

Pro tip: If you think they need more- Use Google. Involve them in the planning to your vacation(with boundaries, of course). For example- give them a choice between 3-4 places that might have similar budgets. Help them look up the place on Google and learn what they can about it before they set foot on the land. Allow them to explore various routes. The richness of the experience is doubled when children “touch- and-feel” what they read about and imagined in their heads.

3. The family unit becomes tighter

When you travel as a family to a foreign land, it is natural to want to stick together as a family. Children are exposed to new cultures, but also learn to value their own identities as a society. Plus, it’s definitely more time spent hanging around with each other – making family units tighter in the process.

4. They learn in the context of the real world

Children learn exponentially more by being out in the real world than they can ever do in a classroom. 

5. They become self-reliant and very resourceful

You might have made a thousand plans. Yet, the only thing we should really expect during travel is the unexpected. The limits that a backpack or a suitcase imposes on travellers is reason enough to be extremely alert, adaptable, self-reliant and resourceful! Plus, they will come up with a thousand ideas to beat ‘boredom’. And, yes- they will see first-hand the workings of group-decisions.

6. You soak in the world together and create memories

Travelling with your children not only changes the way they see the world, but it evolves the way an adult sees the world too. It’s a great way to see and understand the world through your child’s eyes.

Encourage the child to keep a travel journal. The way they write about their travels not only opens up the world to you but helps you understand what the child truly values. In all probability, you might find that the expensive dinner you took him to, did not even make an entry into his diary- but the sparkles you collected by the curb at the bus-station found a triple-star entry into this journal.

Seriously, is there a better way to know your child and see her evolve?

7. They become Global citizens

Travelling the world together means you are preparing your child to fit into the role of a Global citizen. They are less likely to be boxed into limited identities – setting the ground for limitless possibilities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Devishobha is the founder of Kidskintha- an online parenting resource repository dedicated to jumpstarting conversations around millennial parenting, encouraging parents to bring their attention to words, thoughts and actions that will enable them to raise a well-rounded, empathic and motivated generation. You can also find her on the Huffington Post, Parent.co, Entrepreneur, Lifehack, TinyBuddha and many other publications.

You can read the entire article HERE on Kidskintha.

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Christmas Nativity Setup For My Toddler And The Experience That Followed

This is my small & humble Christmas Nativity Scene setup :) My first ever in life, for my 22 months old son! I took a big tray, covered with red cloth, spread some shredded cardboard & put figurines of Baby Jesus, Angel, Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Wisemen, Animals to create the scene of a stable where Baby Jesus was born. I got these figurines from Kerala for 150 INR when we visited there for vacation.

Nativity Scene Setup

I put all his Christmas gifts around this setup at night so that when my son wakes up on 25 December 2016, he is greeted with everything here :)

Here are the details of the setup - 

• Christmas tree with some decoration - I got the tree & ornaments from a local shop
• Gifts for my 22 months old son - My son is a vehicle & book lover & these days crazy about planets! Gifts include fighter plane set, swing with Jesus Christ ( I got this from a facebook group Ionica Toys, DIY planetarium (Again this is from Ionica Toys), shoes, car, tanker, books (from Amazon) & snowflake threading toy from Skola Toys! You can see the snowflake activity post HERE. By the way, you can get an exclusive discount of 15% on ALL Skola Toys till if you use the discount code I shared on my group. Just visit my group HERE & view the pinned post to get the discount code & use it during checkout when you shop Skola Toys from their website www.skola.toys. 

#UPDATE

My #22months old has been playing with these #NativityStory figurines for the last 2 days now & loving it! Look at how he is holding, admiring & kissing baby Jesus :)

I had also read to him nativity story from a book few days back when we were traveling.

I was surprised, he named the characters  correctly on his own during free play & even narrated the story in his own keyword style.

Here is his version :)

Mamma!

Bethlehem, Mary Joseph, Hotel

Andhera, raat ho gayi (dark, night time)

I asked where was Jesus born?

He says mamma stable. Animals.

Shepherds, dekhbhaal (take care), sheep

Wisemen, gifts, baby Jesus

Pretty accurate a narration! My Christmas is made! :)

The #freeplay with #Christmas #Nativity figurines continues.

Some brand new story being weaved here ;)

My son 'A' talking to himself...

A : Ye kaun hai? Wisemen. Ye kaun hai? Camel. A camel pe baitha. Shepherd. Dekhbhaal. Shepherd leto. Camel leto. So jaao. (Who is this? Wisemen. Who is this? Camel. I sit on the camel. Shepherd. Take care. Shepherd lie down. Camel lie down. Go to sleep. )

Mum : ab? (Now?)

A : Subah utho. (Wake up in the morning)

Mum : Ab? (Now?)

A : Khelenge. (Will play)

Mum : Kya? (What?)

A : Chess

I always wonder how creativity fosters during free play!

I also hosted an 18 days FREE kids' activity series on Christmas & New Year theme. If you missed it, check out HERE. My son enjoyed the activities thoroughly & my articles on the same on BabyChakra were received very well too :)

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20 Months Old Toddler's Love For Cars & Logos (VLOG)

It's all about connecting with your child, feeding his curiosity, following his cues, providing exposure to various things.

Children as natural learners, will absorb & learn themselves :)

Watch my 20 months old in action!

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Animal Excavation - Fun Science (STEM) Activity For Kids

It is never too early to introduce children to science. Toddlers with their curious minds are like little sponges, waiting to absorb everything they experience. And since science is all around us, why not introduce them to it early on? Watch this animal excavation activity that your child would love!

Science experiments need not be complex.  Even something as simple as observing how salt helps to melt ice faster is an amazing experience for kids. So here is a fun way to learn this concept and have a gala time! 

My son kept himself busy for so long in this activity that it gave me a much-needed breather. I even happily managed to capture his antics on the camera. He played, explored, observed, experimented and learnt a lot with this simple exercise. 

Below is the video of the activity & in action :)

Click HERE to read the full account of this activity. It has been featured on BabyChakra!

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Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori & Waldorf inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

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Play Is The Work Of Child - Montessori - Free Play Moments - 18 Months (VLOG)

Maria Montessori said - "Play is The Work Of The Child". Free play is very important for a child. It yields a lot, more than what meets our eye.

Here are some moments of free play of my 18 months old son. Joyful & eureka moments that I could film!

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What Can Vehicle Miniatures Teach A Child?

What a child can learn from free play is immense. Even more interesting is the way you can tap into the cues & interests of your child & drive learning through these interests. The child will be interested & enthusiastic in such learning activities. Read on how & what my son learnt, and is still learning following his love for vehicles!

My son who is 18 months old right now, is super duper fond of vehicles of any kind. When I realized this craze months back, I started hunting for miniatures of various vehicles. I did not want to stick to the routine cars, moreover wanted to encash this craze & encourage some learning. 

I finally bought a lot of vehicle miniatures like truck, bus, tempo, auto, bike, scooter, train, engine, fire engine, ambulance, boat, aeroplane, helicopter, tractor and some construction vehicles like dumper truck, digger, mobile crane, cement mixer truck, bulldozer, road roller and what not. This was not a one day purchase obviously. Whenever I found a deal somewhere, online or local market, I hoarded this stuff. Also, I did not give him all the vehicles in one go. It is overwhelming for the child. I looked for his cues, for example, there were days he got super excited seeing an auto. So I gave him the auto miniature & he would play with it endlessly, even sleep holding it. It was so amazing to see him so engaged with that little auto. Same happened for tempo (goods carrier in India), bus, truck etc.

There is a construction going on just in front of our place, so he used to stand at the balcony & watch those construction vehicles work with great interest. That was the time I pulled out his construction toy vehicles from the almirah & gave him to play! He would hold the cement mixer in one hand & watch the real cement mixer work on the construction site for long.

"Play is child's work." ~ Maria Montessori

I did not know how enriching it is to play with these miniatures before I actually saw my son playing with them! I am sharing how his love for vehicles facilitated in so much learning for him, I am sure I have missed a lot more points to enumerate but nevertheless!

• Gross Motor Skills - See his large muscles at work while making a vehicle move. By the way, I made this maroon & yellow parking lot with a ramp for him from an old Flipkart box. All his vehicles were being dumped in a box, they certainly needed a better home ;) 

• Fine Motor Skills while holding & manipulating the vehicles

• Vocabulary Building - Learning about names of vehicles & parts of the vehicles in a hands-on way like wheels, headlights, tail & wings of an aeroplane, blades of a helicopter etc. In the picture below, I was having my lunch & he wanted my attention. So I asked him to get me one vehicle at a time from another room. I asked him, "please get me the dumper truck", and he would get me the dumper truck. So this huge collection you see below, he brought to me rightly according to the vehicle's name. This was at around 15 months if I remember correctly. In another picture below, he is trying to tell me where are the wings, jet engine & tail of an aeroplane

• Counting the wheels in a 2 wheeler, 3 wheeler & 4 wheeler. 
• Learning Shapes - wheel is a circle, window is a rectangle, so on & so forth
• Enhancing Imagination & Making Connections - My son would play for 15 minutes at a stretch with his vehicles (which is a LOT of time considering the super short attention span of babies & toddlers). I am sure in his mind he is doing some kind of imagination & role play. Once he starts talking more, I may get to know what went in his mind while playing with his vehicles all this while. Moreover, seeing a real world vehicle & a toy vehicle side by side helps a child to make connections in his brain, helps to make one to one correspondence, which is a pre-math skill.

• Related Book Reading - I invested in books that were based on vehicles, picture books, story books, sound books, lift the flap books & books of all kinds. He already loves reading books. And books with his favourite vehicles, all the more interested! He matches his toy vehicles with the pictures in the books every now & then. By reading books, he also gets to know more details about how these vehicles work. He LOVES these vehicle-based books! Sharing just a few of them that I already had pics of (along with other non-vehicle titles too). There are a whole bunch of more of such books inside!

• Visual Discrimination - Based on his interest, I made some DIY activities for him to take his interest on a different level & he LOVED them too! These are some color, shape & vehicle matching activities that he started doing successfully from 15 months onwards.

Printable courtesy - Welcome To Mommyhood

• Peeling Off Stickers - I got him puffy foam stickers of cars to peel off. Using stickers is a very good fine motor skill. He loved playing with them too! This sticker sheet had logos of some car brands & he would ask again & again what they are. I told him these are logos & he could remember the names & pointed to the right logo when I asked! This further gave way to learning of logos. We used to go to our society garden every evening & he would point each & every car & ask for the logo name. Now he recognizes some 7-8 logos on paper & on the vehicles on the road too. While in the car, he starts shouting Tata Tata after seeing a Tata bus on the road!

• Perceiving Finer Sounds - My son now knows what sounds some vehicles like aeroplane, fighter plane, train, tempo, truck, car reverse horn etc make. In the middle of anything, when he is playing or reading or roaming around, whenever he hears these sounds (amidst all the noise, believe me!), he stops for a moment, points his fingers to the direction of the sound, says car or whatever is the name, if he can utter that word, smiles, does an eye to eye contact with me or his father, and goes back to his work again! Many times, we do not manage to hear the sound until he tells us to listen & acknowledge! 

• Hands-On Learning & 3D to 2D Matching - Once a 3D object picture is stored successfully in children's brain, it is very easy for them to relate to their 2D counterparts. If we teach vehicles just from the books, they would see a 2D view of it, and would not know how it looks from other angles. They will tend to store a limited view of that vehicle in their brain. We also did shadow matching activity of vehicles & to my surprise, he could do it very easily! Also, anything that anyone can actually experience (hands-on), rather than just read, goes into the long term memory. 

I will link up all the books, toys & puzzles we have related to vehicles in a separate post! For now, you can search them on Amazon & Flipkart.

I also wanted to share a beautiful vehicle set that I got as a gratitude gift from Creative Express because I reviewed their awesome concept calenders. These vehicles are sturdy enough & lovely to play with :)

Next, we plan to do 2 part, 3 part & eventually jigsaw puzzles based on vehicles! We will also do some vehicle painting and sorting of vehicles based on where they go - land, air & water. Later on we will attempt pre-writing work with small vehicles, like tracing the shapes or different kinds of lines using vehicles.

Do you have more suggestions as to how one can use vehicles? I would love to hear. I would also love to know what all activities you did with your child using vehicles :) Do share in comments!

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