Today’s Activities
You can do any of these tasks, in any order (but we've suggested a timetable).
Take as long as your little ones want for each task, let them use their imaginations!
Please share your creations with us on social media.
Jay Jay the Supersonic Bus
Sue Wickstead is a children’s author and writes children’s picture books. Sue was once involved with a playbus play project, which is the inspiration behind many of her picture books. Sue’s stories always have a bus featured somewhere in the story.
9.30am Activity:
Story- Jay Jay the Supersonic Bus
Read a story – ‘Jay-Jay the Supersonic Bus’.
This is the story behind the real bus.
Grown Ups:
This is the first of the story books written by Sue Wickstead.
It is the story of how Jay-Jay was once an ordinary bus that was turned into a Playbus. Ask your child some questions when they have listened to the story.
What was their favourite part and why?
What would you most like to play with on this bus?
What could the children do upstairs; downstairs and outside?
Where would you most like to play?
How do you think Jay-Jay felt when he was at the scrap-yard?
Draw a picture of a bus and the children playing.
Write a sentence or words about the bus. This activity supports letter recognition and creativity.
10.30am Activity:
Create Your Own Bus Journey
In this activity Sue shares how to create your own bus using your toys.
Use other smaller role play toys such as Lego, Duplo or Playmobile to make different buses.
Use role play opportunities to act out your events from the story.
Grown Ups:
Help your child to build a bus to play on using cushions, small chairs etc. Here are some questions you can ask your child:
Have you ever travelled on a bus?
What was it like?
What did you enjoy most?
Did you travel upstairs?
What will you do to make your bus?
Where will you travel to?
What could you sing along the way?
Where will you travel to?
This activity supports language and communication development. It lets them express their knowledge and understanding and sequence events.
1:30pm Activity:
Toy Cupboard
Sue shares how you can celebrate the toys you love by creating your own toy cupboard.
What toys would you like in your toy cupboard?
Using the worksheet, the children could cut out pictures of different toys that they would most like to have to play with.
Grown Ups:
Ask the children to think about the different toys upstairs on the Playbus.
Encourage the children to think of different toys that they might not have at home. Use old magazines or draw pictures to add to your toy cupboard.
Talk about their choices.
This activity helps develop your child’s fine motor skills as well as hand eye coordination. It also helps language and communication development. It lets them express their opinions and choices.
2:30pm Activity:
Model Making
What messy creative activities could the children do downstairs on the Playbus?
Can you paint or play with sand on a real bus?
The children liked to squash roll out and mould the Playdough. Do you?
Grown Ups:
Give the children some playdough and some cutters to make different shapes with the dough.
Can they make a playdough bus?
This activity supports your child’s fine motor skills as well as language and communication development.
Discuss what they are doing along the way.
Click on the model making link for the Playdough recipe.
If you've finished these and still have time for fun...
Listen to Sue read: ‘Jay-Jay the Supersonic Bus.’
Collect and read other books about buses and things that travel on wheels, how are they the same?
Draw or use a road map for their vehicles to travel along?
Story time:
Five Minutes More
Grown Ups:
Listen to the poem ‘Five Minutes more’, does that sound like the children at Bedtime…Can I just have five minutes more?