Caroline
We picked up some books about Trains this past week at the library and after reading them we decided to embark on an adventure of making our very own train. My boys’ main requirement was that it had to be a freight train so they could carry around some of their favorite toys in it.
I instantly thought of two empty Velveeta Cheese boxes that I had saved knowing someday I would have a use for them. I took the tops of the boxes off and put them together to make the front of the train and then used the cardboard bottoms as the box cars.
The boys picked out what colors they wanted and painted each of the pieces.
They also painted two clothespins black to use as the smoke stack for the train.
Connecting the train cars was the most difficult part of this project. I used black yarn to put them together.
Lastly we cut out some black circles for the wheels and my son glued them around the train.
In some of the books we read, the freight cars had things written on them so my son said he wanted me to write on the cars. They decided one of them should be for dinosaurs and one should be for Star Wars. You can also see I added some yellow detail on the freight cars for the boys too. Totally not needed, but my son used to be a HUGE Thomas the Train fan and remembered those lines being on his old trains.
After it was all finished the boys had quite the Star Wars set up on he table. The bad guys were on top of the train, Anakin and Luke Skywalker were hiding in the freight car, and Obi-Wan and R2-D2 were in their ship on the sidelines as back up. My boys are so fun!
We also read Trains from the Heinemann first library collection. I picked out this book because I wanted my boys to learn about all the different types of trains throughout the world. I thought it was really educational for them and gave them a good understanding on how different types of trains worked.
