F is for Freight Train

Circle Time

Train Books and train songs from our Thomas Singalong book.

Activities
Wood Train Set
Magnet Fishing Game
Folding Paper Fans
Blanket Fort building

Art Study
Red Fish by Henry Mattisse

Snack
Fish sticks

Arts and Crafts
Shape building train

Cooking
Fruit Salad

Field Trip
Train station!

Shape Building Art

For this project I gave Zeke an assortment of pre-cut shapes and a glue stick and then encouraged him to build a train. (He requested that I cut some steam when we were finished, so then we added that as well.) Trains lend themselves really well to this, but other ideas are flowers, cityscapes, cars. The possibilities are really endless.

Train Books

All Aboard the Dino Train by Deb Lund

Dinosaurs! And trains!! Zeke's two very favorite things, in fact, I could hardly tell you which one he loves more. So this book, combining the two, could hardly disappoint. It was by far Zeke's favorite book this week. Perhaps even his favorite book ever. I loved the bright and large scale of the illustrations and though I got a bit tired of the many (many) dino-words, the story was very cute.



And the Train Goes... by William Bee

I just loved the bright retro illustrations of this book, especially the train itself, which looked like something Willie Wonka might ride. The text takes us over each colorful car and it's passengers and includes many fun sound effects and a repeating refrain that Zeke started to read aloud with me right away.

Train Song by Diane Siebert

The beautiful rhythms of the text mimic a train as it slowly pulls out of the station, picks up speed, and then slows down again as it reaches its destination and the oil painting illustrations are truly gorgeous and rich with vivid detail. This calming book put my youngest to sleep several times.



Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown

I love Margeret Wise Brown so imagine my excitement when I saw that she has a train book! And no, it did not disappoint. The story parallels the journey of two trains going west- one a real train crossing the country, the other a toy wooden train cleverly mimicking its journey. As the real train goes up a hill, the toy train goes up the banister; as the real train comes to a river, the toy train reaches the bath tub. Probably my favorite of this weeks picks.


And of course all sorts of the Thomas the Train books from our own collection were brought out as well- we have many of them!

Fishing Game

I put this together, because, well, who doesn't love a magnetic fishing game?

But it could also be used to learn colors or numbers (notice the sequins).

All I did was free-hand cut two identical fish shapes, and then blanket stitch them together with a washer in their mouth to be the metal attractor.

My fishing rod is a stick found in our backyard, some twine, and a magnet.

Zeke loves to put down a piece of blue silk to act like the water, and he calls out the color or number of the fish that he "catches".