Trains Week for Preschoolers - Part 3

Preparing activities for trains week came very easily to me. So many things to do with such a wide topic. Here is thus the last post on the matter...

Steamies versus Diesels Sorting

By far the easiest activity for my son who seems to know quite a lot about trains...

Living versus non-living

Enough said... :)

Train building

This activity was a tough one for both *gulp* me and Adrian. He had to move the pieces around quite a bit before it looked right. I printed the "master" from and then traced it on construction paper, cut it up and tried to do it myself. It took me a few tries and it took as many times for Adrian.

Decorating a tunnel

Simple art project to do with a box covered in white paper. I actually intended on having him use several mediums but he only wanted to use the Thomas & Friends stamps. I had also put out markers, crayons and fingerpaint though. Stickers would have worked well too but we were all out of Thomas and Friends stickers. (Wonder who used them all?) :) A tip...Get a sturdy and thick box. Adrian was getting a bit agitated sometimes because the stamps wouldn't "work right". When boxes are too supple, it doesn't print well. My bad!

How many puffs of smoke?

A lovely activity that was well enjoyed. I put out a bowl of  cotton balls and a few engines. I also provided enough die for each engine. Adrian would then roll a die, put it under the engine and put the right amount of smoke puffs above the train. How cute is that?

"Coal" Transfer

For our steamies, coal is needed. As such, it was Adrian's job to put the "coal" (black/grey beads) in the "boiler" (small bowl) with some tongs (because well, coal is hot!). He did well despite the fact that the beads were slightly slippery and the "boiler" quite small. 

Melissa & Doug Alphabet Floor Puzzle in the form of a train

How many wheels

Harold and Captain (part of the Thomas & Friends collection), need wheels I told my son. He then rolled the die and determined how many pasta wheels to give each vehicle.

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Living Montessori Now, B-Inspired Mama, I can Teach my Child, No Time for Flashcards, and 123 Homeschool 4 Me.

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.

Trains Week for Preschoolers

Nothing will ever be more exciting than a Thomas & Friends/Trains week for Adrian. We did it last year and I repeated this year and it was a HUGE hit again. I should be posting 3 different times on this subject as we had plenty to keep us busy this last week.

Air, Water, or Land?

Using some of his Thomas & Friends vehicles, Adrian had to sort whether the vehicle was to be seen on road/tracks, in the water or in the sky. Needless to say, it was a quick and easy activity for Adrian.

Matching & Memory Game

A nice little game of matching Thomas & Friends cards and then a memory game followed. There are lots of cards so I let him do the memory game by color to make it a tad easier. We did all the orange cards together, then the blue ones and finally the green ones but when it came to matching, all the cards were on the table. He loves this game and I'm thinking of putting the cards in my purse for when we travel.

Dot-to-Dot

I like this worksheet. Unlike most dot-to-dots, this one has two parts. The train has alphabet letters to join together and then the number dot-to-dot next to it. On top of it, the latter really has to be done well in order to discover what it is and yet, it is easy enough. Adrian worked really hard trying it go through each dot. I had to call the letters and numbers out otherwise he goes straight through and doesn't hit the dots. This printout was found on ThomasTheTankEngineFriends.

Sorting by Color...and more

I brought a small basket of trains to sort by color for Adrian. It's very basic (here it's only blue and green colors) but then I dug deeper into the sorting activity and it also became a counting activity. A loves to count so it was very pleasant for him. We sorted by quantity of wheels, by color, by steamies versus diesels, by tendered engine versus tank engine, etc. Then we had to count the wheels to sort the 4 wheels from the 6 from the 8 and we also counted funnels, whistles, tenders. We extended further by counting the number of trains with glasses, with red stripes and so on. It went on and on. Try it with your kids. The possibilities are endless.

Sorting by Wheel Quantity

Color by Number

If your kid is fond of Thomas & Friends, he probably knows about Patchwork Hiro. Hiro used to be very colorful train before being re-built and re-painted. I found a coloring sheet (ThomasTheTrain) and used it to make a color-by-number activity. Adrian loved it. I wish there wasn't so many lines so there would be less confusion when it came to what is inclusive and exclusive of an area to be colored but oh well. It was lots of fun.

Not pictured but also a big hit was the game of Green Light/Red Light. We pretended to be a train waiting at signals. I showed either a green or red piece of construction paper to let him know whether he could proceed or not. 

More on Train Week later. :)