Take a ride on a train or trolley.
Often you can find a train at your local zoo, museums, amusement park, or petting farm. If not, take the make believe “Passenger Train” outside and around the neighborhood.
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-Catch Me, Catch Me!, by the Rev. W. Awdry
-Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo, by Kevin Lewis
-Little Engine That Could, by Watty Piper
-The Train, by David McPhail
- The Train To Lulu's, by Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard
-Trains, by Byron Barton
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Number Train (4+ years)
Materials: Cardboard, markers, glue, and construction paper.
Description: Create railroad shapes by cutting out railroad engines and cars from cardboard. Help the children trace a train onto large sheets of construction paper. Write numbers on each car. Have the children try to arrange the railroad cars in order on another sheet of paper, and paste them in place when they are correctly laid out. Let them make the train as long as they want. This is great for practicing counting also. |
Passenger Train (18+ months)
Materials: Rope or towel (optional)
Description: Invite the children to make a passenger train by lining up behind you, putting their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them, or holding a rope (this should be supervised). Move around the room making train noises; make stops to pick up passengers, slow down to take corners, drop off freight, and reconnect passenger cars, and so on.
Make Believe Train (2+ years)
Materials: Chairs or pillows to sit on, engineer hats and whistles (optional).
Description: Line up chairs or pillows behind one another or next to each other for the "train". Make tickets and have someone collect them. Ask all the children to climb aboard. Pretend to move with the train as it moves down the tracks. As the train goes uphill, lean back and chug slowly. As it goes downhill, lean forward and race down the hill. On turns, lean left or right. If it’s a bumpy ride, bounce up and down. Don’t forget to make train sounds as you move along the track. It’s fun to play to music also.
Mr. Conductor (3+ years)
Follow the rules to “Simon Says” replacing “Simon Says” with “Mr. Conductor Says”. Players form a line facing the leader, who performs any action that states “Simon Says” do this. If he doesn't say “Simon Says" before an action, then anyone who imitates the action is out of the game. Continue until one person is left. |
Twinkie Trains
Ingredients: Store bought Twinkies, marshmallows, and M&M’s.
Directions: Serve Twinkies as trains. Use a marshmallow for the smoke
stack, and m&m’s as the wheels. If desired, use
additional frosting to help attach the decorations.
Marshmallow Trains
Ingredients: Marshmallows and pretzel sticks
Directions: Use pretzel sticks to hook the "cars" together to
make a train.
Train Cookies
Ingredients: Sugar cookies and colored frostings
Directions: Bake train shaped sugar cookies. Provide several different
colored frosting to decorate, The children will enjoy designing their
own train cookies. |
Trains and Train Tracks (2+ years)
Materials: Train Set
Description: Set up a train town around the tracks.
Bubbles (6+ months)
Materials: Bubbles and wands.
Description: All ages love bubbles! This can be done inside or outside. Toddlers can blow the bubbles or use wands. Otherwise, you can blow them and let the children catch them.
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Forgiveness: Explain how to forgive
an incident (such as another child
grabbing away a toy) once the child
makes an effort to apologize. Using
the words "I forgive you" can
encourage
your child to seek
forgiveness, too, as it
becomes
more
a part of their dialogue.
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Teething/Losing teeth:
-Signs of teething
-Soothing teething/toothaches
-Losing teeth
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