This last week our preschool time focused on the letter ‘T’ and that included making a little train as our craft. It was too cute to just post a picture of and not give directions to make your own. {grins} A friend’s son made something similar and so I tweaked it to make it work even better. This project would require more adult help for younger kids (i.e. 2-4) ~ depending on how much cutting and pasting they are able to do.
You can make your train as long {or as short} as you’d like. We decided on four colors, so we had four cars on our train. Be sure to ask your child which is first and last. I forgot that the caboose is red…and had a four-year-old that was non-too-happy when he saw I made it the engine.
Oops.
That said, here’s the scoop on making your own little engine and rail cars.
What You’ll Need:
- Four or more toilet paper rolls {you can get these extremely fast if you leave your two-year-old alone in the bathroom for about 4 minutes or so}
- a clothespin
- a cotton ball
- paper clips {colorful ones are even more fun}
- black construction paper
- a hole punch
- glue stick
- scissors
- various colors of paint
- a LARGE smock and painting tarp {i.e. protection for anyone surrounded by a paint-weilding preschooler}
How to make it:
- Have your child paint each of the toilet paper tubes. Set them aside to dry.
- Paint the clothespin black. Set aside to dry.
- Trace 4 wheels for each toilet paper tube that you decide to add to your train. I traced around the end of a toilet paper tube. You can fit about 20 circles on a sheet of construction paper. Have your child cut some {or all}of them out.
- Use a black marker {or some black paint} to color your cotton ball to make it look like the smoke/steam coming out of the train.
- When the paint is dry on the tubes, lay them all on the table to find how they best ‘rest’. Glue 4 wheels onto each train car.
- Line up the cars in the order you want them to be linked. Punch a hole on the bottoms of each car {front and back except for the engine and caboose} to link each train car together.
- Link the train cars together using paperclips.
- Punch two holes (overlapping) on the front top of the engine.
- Insert the clothespin into the two holes on the top of the engine.
- Glue the cotton ball to the top of the clothespin and pull/stretch it out to make it look like the smoke is traveling behind the train.
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