Garage
Busy places Series
What’s inside...
This series explores familiar busy places, using specially commissioned photographs and simple text to explain the activities and roles of people during a busy day at a particular location. This title in the BUSY PLACES series focuses on a garage, detailing a day's activities and providing safety tips for visitors, all written to support National Curriculum Key Stage 1.
Series reading
Non-Sequential
Age
4-8
Length
24 pages
Text complexity
Discussion points
What did you like the most about the people working in the garage?
If you could fix any vehicle, which one would you choose and why?
How do the different tools in the garage help fix the vehicles?
Can you describe how teamwork is shown in the garage?
How do you think the garage workers feel when they’ve fixed a vehicle?
Tip: Role play these questions
While discussing the book, relate the garage tools to household tools and their uses to make the concepts familiar.
Encourage your child to talk about times they have helped someone, similar to how the garage workers help vehicle owners.
After reading, you can play pretend to run a garage using toy cars and tools to reinforce the book's themes.
Highlight the problem-solving aspect by asking your child how they would solve typical problems that might happen in a garage.
Use lots of praise and encouragement to build your child’s confidence as they express their ideas and thoughts about the book.
Key lessons
Example Lesson: Teamwork and Collaboration
Explanation: The book depicts various characters working together in a garage to fix cars, showing how collaboration can lead to successful outcomes.
Real-World Application: Children learn the importance of working together with others to achieve common goals, which can be applied in group activities at school or during playtime.
Example Lesson: Problem Solving
Explanation: As the characters encounter different mechanical issues, they use critical thinking and creativity to solve problems.
Real-World Application: This encourages children to think critically and creatively in their daily challenges, whether it’s figuring out a puzzle or resolving a disagreement with a peer.
Example Lesson: Value of Hard Work
Explanation: The characters take pride in their work and go through several steps to repair the vehicles, demonstrating the rewards of hard work.
Real-World Application: Kids are taught the importance of perseverance and effort in tasks, be it in completing homework, chores, or learning a new skill.
Example Lesson: Learning from Mistakes
Explanation: When repairs do not go as planned, characters analyze what went wrong and learn from these mistakes.
Real-World Application: This can help children understand that mistakes are a part of learning and that they provide opportunities for growth and improvement.