DIY Felt Valentine Train
Posted by Jessica Petersen on Feb 9, 2013
Felt trains. The Little Engineer and I have had a lot of fun with them in the past. I’ll do a more complete tutorial on our super easy Thomas & Friends set in the near future, but this Valentine’s Day version is just as fun, if not more so. I love playing with it because the colors are so striking and romantic, and the Little Engineer was even more inspired by it than I expected.
This is a great last minute activity to add to your plans for the week because kids can play with the felt trains while you’re cutting them out. An older child could help make the trains, and it could be a fun Valentine’s Day gift for an older sibling to give to a younger train fan. And all you need is a few pieces of felt in Valentine’s Day colors and/or patterns, a larger piece of felt to place them on, and a good pair of scissors.
Spread the large piece of felt out on the floor or a bed and sit down next to it. Start cutting out train pieces, and stack them by shape on the larger piece. If your child is anything like the Little Engineer, you’ll have company as soon as the first few snips sound out.
Here are the pieces I made from about seven or eight pieces of felt, but even two or three pieces of felt would give you plenty of pieces to work with. Note that several of these are stacked up in pretty tall stacks, so there are even more pieces than it looks like:
Out of each piece of felt, I tried to cut a variety of the following shapes: engine bodies, coal tenders, wheels, funnels/smokestacks, domes. Tiny rectangles for couplers, small ones for windows, slightly bigger ones for doors, long thin ones for footplates and cab roofs, bigger ones for box cars and passenger coaches. Swirly cloud shapes for steam. Bumpy black pieces for coal in the tender. And, of course, lots of hearts for freight and general decorating purposes.
This was the train the Little Engineer came up with when I was about halfway through cutting the pieces out:
I love this so much. Beyond motherly bias, I think it’s cool that it looks like one of the earliest steam engines. We’ve been reading some of our favorite books about the history of trains lately, so he may have been inspired by the pictures in them.
And here’s mine that I made on the opposite side of the piece of felt:
I cut too many pieces out of the white and black felt to make all of the steam pieces I wanted to, so we had to get another piece at the craft store. I also picked up a big piece of sparkly white felt for another purpose that got commandeered for our Valentine train. This is what I came up with after that:
I’m especially pleased with the way those passenger coaches came out. I want to ride this train on Valentine’s Day! Then the Little Engineer, as usual, came up with an even more fun way to play with the pieces.
He combined the felt train with another of our favorite games, Train Store. Only this time, instead of buying toy trains, he wanted to be an engineer buying all the different parts to build his engine and all the cars it would pull. We sorted and stacked the different pieces, and I questioned him about what he wanted, and told him the colors everything came in. He chose his pieces, paid for them, and built his train.
He reached the edge of the felt and wasn’t ready to stop adding cars, so he just kept going. He wanted two trains, so he contracted the train store (me) to put together a second train above his.
Considering I wasn’t sure he’d want to play with these over his Thomas felt trains, this has held his interest incredibly well. We’ve played several times this week, and he still wants to play more. And when Valentine’s Day comes and goes, we can mix them in with the rest of our felt trains, and play a really big version of Train Part Store.
If you’re interested in more train ideas for Valentine’s Day, here are a few of the things we’ve been doing. We have a couple more Valentine’s Day activities to share this coming week as well.
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Hi, I'm Jessica. While playing trains day in and day out for the last two years, my Little Engineer and I have had a lot of fun and learned so much together. I'm excited to share our discoveries with other people who have young train enthusiasts in their lives. Read more about our family and how Play Trains! came about... 
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These are so cool! Thanks for stopping by our Preschool – PreKinder Nook! http://itsybitsylearners.com/2013/02/preschool-prekinder-nook/
Allie @ http://www.itsybitsylearners.com
Alison recently posted…Link-Up: Preschool PreKinder Nook #2
Thanks! And thanks for coming to visit.
What a cute idea!! I love felt crafts. Stopping by from the link up.
Thanks! I’ve really come to love felt since having a child.
That is the cutest train I have ever seen!
Melanie recently posted…Superhero Valentines
Thanks! It makes me happy to look at them while we play.
These are so beautiful! Love your Valentine trains! I’m sure my son would love them too.
Katie @ Gift of Curiosity recently posted…Simple Valentine’s craft for preschoolers
Thanks! It’s been a fun thing to share with my son.
These are awesome!! I love them!! I’m going to pin this and share it on my PreschoolPowolPackets Facebook page!!
Carla recently posted…Hibernation FREEBIES & Winner
Great! Thanks for sharing & pinning.
Those are adorable trains! What a unique idea, I love all the different patterns of felt. Thanks for sharing on Share it Saturday!
Yeah, the patterns really make it! Some of them come in other colors, so that’s the next felt train project. Thanks for stopping by!
Jessica recently posted…DIY Train Track Valentines
These are great! I love that he has so much fun building the trains then wanted to play Train Store. This really lets his imagination go wild. I need to do more felt crafts with my girls, and this would be great. Thanks so much for sharing on We Made That!
Great! I hope you enjoy them as much as we have.
That’s adorable!
Thanks!
Love this, so cute! Thanks for sharing!!
Jamie
http://www.huckleberrylove.com
Jamie recently posted…Homemade Finger Paint {Recipe}
Thanks!
Jessica recently posted…DIY Engineer Heart Pendants and Ornaments
What a wonderful idea! I really love this one. Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!
Carrie recently posted…Peg Doll Animals
Thanks!
Jessica recently posted…DIY Train Track Valentines
This is really cute! I love the patterned felt you used, too!Thanks for linking to Share It Saturday.
Karyn recently posted…President’s Day Learning Fun
Thanks! I have some of the red felt with the sparkly black swirls in blue as well…I need to come up with a train to make out of that.
Jessica recently posted…Valentine Counting with Thomas and Percy
Simply adorable! We love playing with felt around here, too. There’s so many possibilities. I know my son would love a felt train!
Thanks for sharing at the Sunday Showcase!
Trisha @ Inspiration Laboratories recently posted…Letter Sounds Race
I love felt. Felt is just so easy to make things from, and the cheap kind is so cheap, it doesn’t make me feel like I have to “do it right.” Thanks for visiting again!
Jessica recently posted…DIY Engineer Heart Pendants and Ornaments