Today, I have two things to share with you: a fun beach activity that combines creativity, science, and sensory play, and the inspiration for it, a great series of train books for kids of any age! From what I've seen, it can be difficult to find many books about trains that will appeal to ...
The sunshine that keeps breaking through our familiar Seattle clouds has been putting thoughts of summer fun in my head. At the same time, the lure of playing wooden trains is hard for the Little Engineer to resist. We often take the trains outside and play with them on a picnic mat in the ...
When I made these laminated train pieces, I wasn't planning to incorporate them in water play. But now that we've happened upon that use for them, I can't wait to make more! These waterproof play pictures are great for both bath time and all kinds of water or messy play. Next time, though, I'm ...
This surfboard craft for kids is a great way to bring favorite toys into water play. The Little Engineer had so much fun pretending his toys were really surfing! Plus there's a lot of hands-on science going on, as kids try to get the toys to stand up on their surfboards. It would also be fun to make ...
Early on, the Little Engineer developed an interest in designing his own wooden trains. I've often wished that LEGO made a train that was compatible with wooden train tracks, but could be customized with any LEGO bricks he wanted to use. The answer was to make our own LEGO wooden train hybrid! By ...
The first time we used our DIY mini light boxes with wooden train tracks, the Little Engineer immediately saw the stacking potential (which I hadn't noticed yet). He put one light box on top of another and ran off to get our tallest ascending track to send a train rolling down from the top. We ...
I was getting ready to photograph a different portable train set, one we've taken with us many times in the past, when I had an idea. No, a challenge. I managed to fit a train small world in a pencil box, I thought. I would be pretty awesome if I could fit a complete wooden train set in ...
Old Tracks, New Tricks, is a story about three little wooden train tracks who shake up an old wooden train set. But it's so much more than that. It's a way to inspire children to invent new fun with their old favorite toys, and to value and celebrate the creativity of others at the same time as confidently sharing their own ideas. This page contains ...
Searching for the best wooden train set for your child? I've turned my expert eye on the wooden train sets that currently on the market so that you can make an informed choice. A train set can sound good on paper, but there's nothing like hands-on play to tell you whether it's going to be the ...
If you traveled back in time to my son's toddler days, you would find us on his bedroom floor, surrounded by wooden train tracks. My son: the one clutching at train in his chubby toddler fist as he ran its wheels down the almost-finished track. Me: the one building my masterpiece railway at ...
Ice and snow have been a recurring theme in our train play, no matter the season. First we froze toy trains in ice and found many different ways to play with snow (real or pretend) and trains. This summer, we made a train out of ice and sent it whooshing around our deck. The logical next step was to haul…
I can’t think of a better motivator for a little train lover to put on a thinking cap than to see a collection of toy trains, trapped in ice and in desperate need of rescue. Especially if the toy trains are new, never-before-seen ones, like they were for the Little Engineer when we did this…
