At-Home Activities: Cars

We have created sensory-friendly at-home activities related to cars that will keep your family engaged and learning beyond our sensory-friendly programming. These resources have connections to The Henry Ford, as well as a variety of related activities. They can be used at any time and in any combination. Please feel free to contact accessibility@thehenryford.org with any questions or suggestions.

• How does this car look different from the car that we drive/the cars that we see?
• In this video, they describe Henry Ford as an innovator-- what do you think this means?
  • Where do we see innovation in our lives today?
  • In what ways are you an innovator?
• Henry Ford built this car with materials that were readily available (iron, leather, chains). What would you make with the items around you right now? (eg. wood from a table, glass from dishes, any tools laying around).

• Carrying the theme of innovation and using materials that you have to create, you and your child can make a rubber band car. Note: If your child is unable to add the rubber bands, you can still make a working car without them.
• This involves collecting materials from your home, understanding how those materials can fit together to make a working car (disks are round so they should be the wheels), and then designing/decorating the car.
• This activity can also allow your child a tactile learning experience, as well as an opportunity to create something from scratch using their own understanding and creativity.

• This article describes how to engage your child in various learning activities using their interest in cars. These activities include:
  • Use cars to practice math skills. Take any toy cars that you have, and ask your child to use the cars in different addition and subtraction (or multiplication and division) problems. For example, take a pile of cards and ask your child to solve the problem 2+3=? using the cars. Take two cars and three cars and put them together to make five.
  • Use cars to practice sorting and organizing skills (eg. sort the cars by color, sort cars into cars and trucks).
  • Patterns: show your child a pattern in colors (yellow red yellow red) and ask your child to create the same pattern using cars.

• The Wheels on the Bus
• Driving in My Car
• We All Go Traveling By
• Life is a Highway from Cars

Here are some places in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village that you can visit to learn more about cars:

Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation

Driving America (Henry Ford Museum Auto Collection - Driving America Exhibit)
Driven to Win: Racing in America (Driven to Win: Racing in America - New Exhibit at The Henry Ford)

Greenfield Village

Henry Ford’s Model T District

• Bagley Avenue Workshop
• Ford Home
• Ford Motor Company
• Henry Ford Theater

Take a Model T ride