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. ...
Mini Sand Play Set
The Little Engineer loves playing the sand no matter what, but he loves it even more when we have some sort of grand plan involving his favorite things. The railroad we built in the sand after reading the Peter's Railway books last year was a plan like that, one that he remembers and has asked to do ...
Toy Surfboard Craft for Kids
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 ...
Story Cups for Light Play
After I came up with our tiny trains and tracks for light play, I wanted to have some kind of scenery to add to our mini light box train layouts. At about the same time, I saw this wonderful post about Alphabet Cups on the Light Box over at The Imagination Tree. We had plenty of the little plastic ...
Train Track Counting Activity and Busy Bag
Over the past few years, I've had fun thinking up ideas for little activities and busy bags to put in my purse that are tailored to my son's interests. So, as you can imagine, we've played a lot of trains in a lot of different ways at restaurant tables. Here's a simple train track counting activity ...
Trains and Tracks for Light Boxes and Light Tables
A tiny light box needs a tiny train set to go with it, right? Once I came up with a way to make our own mini light box, I was on a mission to find trains that would work with light boxes or light tables. Especially small ones, given that was what we had. I came up with this tiny, translucent train ...
Two Color Oil and Water Discovery Bottles
These vibrant oil and water discovery bottles contain no lamp oil, using all edible ingredients. This makes them a safe science activity for preschoolers to make on their own! We found some fun train-related things to include in our bottle, but you could make them with any (or no) theme in ...
Portable Small World: Pretend Model Train Set
Safari Ltd. generously provided us with a Train Toob to try out. No positive review was required and all my opinions and observations are, as always, my own. When Safari Ltd. offered to send us a Train Toob, the Little Engineer was so excited I knew I had to do something special with it. I had ...
Rescuing Toy Trains from Ice
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 last ...
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.