Trains Week for Preschoolers - Part 2

Trains! More trains! Here's a few more activities we did during Trains Week in Preschool.

Fine Motor - Making a train track

Hammering nails is something pretty much everybody will have to do at some point so this is a mix of fine motor and practical life exercise I guess. I thought using an egg carton would be a bit more exciting than styrofoam, which, I usually use for hammering activities. I pre-cut 6 black strips of construction paper and provided 6 golf tees and a wood hammer from a pounding toy we have. Adrian then had to hammer down "new tracks" for his trains. It was a bit difficult at first. It seems like he was afraid he wouldn't be able to go through the carton but once he mastered the required amount of strength, it was easy and fun to him.

Adrian working on nailing down the planks for the track

Parts of a train

We've been doing "Parts of something" almost every week since the beginning of the new school year. Of  course, trains being such an important part of Adrian's life, he already knew quite a couple of parts but this worksheet made him learn a few more. I had him color the part as he found it from the "color legend" I made on the right. Worksheet is from Fisher-Price.

Thomas & Friends puzzle

We have a lot of puzzles here and jigsaw puzzles are a lot more challenging than peg puzzle of course. This one wasn't so bad though. Adrian didn't need help in completing it and loved that it came in a tin box.

Sorting & Counting tracks

Yes, something very obvious but fun for a counting lover. I put some tracks in a basket and asked Adrian to sort by different criteria. For example, we sorted by straight versus curved track. We then sorted by lengths for both the straight and curved tracks. We also counted them as we went. 

Sandpaper letters and trains

Adrian learned all his letters by the time he was 18 months old BUT, I taught him the sounds only last year. He still remembers them and so I will be working on literacy a bit more from now on. For this activity, I brought out A-M and a few trains whose name began with a letter in between A and M. He then had to figure out which was the first letter of each train's name and match it to its sandpaper letter. The next day, I did the same with letters N-Z and finally on the third day, I brought out all the letters and different engines. 

Patterning with Thomas & Friends stamps

I purchased these stampers on Ebay last year. They were part of Adrian's birhday favors. They were a big hit and still are. I started 3 sequences of patterns on a sheet and stopped midway on the sheet. Adrian then had to complete each sequence with the right stamps. He did wonderful and loved stamping.

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Today, I'm happily linking up to:

Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase,  123 Homeschool 4 Me

and Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday.