Construction machines for kids

What's here

Twelve machines from the job site, each one animated and noisy in the best way. Tap the cement mixer and its drum spins. Tap the wrecking ball and it swings. Every machine tells your toddler one plain, true thing about what it does, which is exactly the question toddlers ask a hundred times a day when you pass a construction site. This page is for the kid who makes you stop the stroller so they can watch the digger.

Meet these first

• Dump Truck, who tips his big bed way up high to pour out all the dirt
• Crane, who lifts heavy things way up high with his long, tall arm
• Cement Mixer, whose big drum spins round and round so the cement stays smooth
• Bulldozer, who pushes big piles of dirt with his strong, flat front blade
• Backhoe, who scoops big holes with his bendy arm and bucket
• Wrecking Ball, who swings on a big strong chain to knock down old walls
• Steamroller, whose huge, heavy roller squishes the road nice and flat
• Skid Steer, the little digger who can spin around in a tiny tight space

How to play (60 seconds)

Ask your toddler to find the machine that knocks things down, and when the wrecking ball swings, swing your arm along with it. Then ask them to find the truck that dumps out dirt, and tip your hands over together when the dump truck raises its bed. Finish with "which one squishes the road flat?" and press your palms down on the floor when the steamroller rolls in. Acting out each machine with your body is the whole trick. Toddlers remember words their hands and arms have done.

Good to know

Machine names are action words in disguise. A dump truck dumps, a mixer mixes, a roller rolls. Narrating the action while your toddler taps ("it's scooping, scoop scoop scoop") pairs each new word with something they can see moving, which is a nice, low-pressure way to grow vocabulary. When you're done on screen, the free Starter Pack on our printables page has first-words cards you can bring to the window the next time a real digger shows up outside. Grab it at /printables.

Keep exploring

Machine kids rarely stop at one page. Roll on to big-trucks for the highway crowd, vehicles for fire trucks and garbage trucks, trains for everything on rails, and community-helpers to meet the builder who drives all this stuff. The homepage has the full lineup of themes.