Come play with the Little Engineer! While our jumping off point for this series of video playdates is a Thomas MINIS advent calendar, our hope is to inspire a fun, creative play session with your child’s favorite trains, plus some simple items or toys you probably already have around the house.
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I’ll give you a quick review of the Thomas MINIS advent calendar we’re opening (available at Walmart or Amazon right now): the trains are adorable and roll very well; the downside to it is that the calendar itself is made of an extremely flimsy cardboard, which makes opening it kind of tough for the kiddo (I edited out the initial attempts from the first video in the interest of time!).
Day 1
Thomas MINI of the day: Salty
Activity: Draw a track layout for a toy train!
Activity materials: You’ll need a favorite train, a piece of paper, and crayons or markers for your child to draw with.
Day 2
Thomas MINI of the day: Scruff
Activity: Draw a track layout for a toy train — continued! (Engineer Kid wanted to add to his from yesterday.)
Activity materials: You’ll need a favorite train, a piece of paper (or the track drawing from Day 1 to add onto), and crayons or markers for your child to draw with.
Day 3
Thomas MINI of the day: Winter Skarloey
Activity: Connect Thomas MINIS engines to wooden train Take’n’Play freight cars, then load them up with jingle bells and crash them.
Activity materials: Today’s activity turned out to be a little more geared toward the Thomas MINIS than we were aiming for, but we were just so excited about figuring out how to couple up freight cars to the mini engines that we couldn’t help it. You’ll need a Thomas MINIS engine, a freight car with a magnetic coupler, and 3/4 inch and/or 1 inch jingle bells. If you don’t have that size of jingle bells, watch this video for more ways to connect them:
Day 4
Looking for the perfect train set for your little engineer? Check out our guide to the best wooden train sets!
Hi, I'm Jessica! While playing trains for the last several 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 kids who love trains in their lives.
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