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Pumpkin Mountain Railroad Building: a Halloween Train Activity from Play Trains!

Pumpkin Mountain Railroad Building — Halloween Train Activity

We're back with another great Halloween train activity: building a mountain railroad on a pumpkin. Well, two pumpkins, in our case. Once I started setting up the train tracks, we were having too much fun not to bring in the second pumpkin! ...

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Building with Mini Light Boxes: Roller Coaster Tracks for Wooden Trains @ Play Trains!

Building with Mini Light Boxes: Wooden Train Roller Coaster Tracks

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 ...

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Play Dough Train Set from Play Trains! put together a train-making set for kids with play dough and Duplo bricks.

Play Dough Train Set

This activity started from a simple question: "Mama, do they make Play-Doh train sets?" We did a quick search on the internet to confirm that no, Play-Doh didn't have a train-making set. Disappointment was just starting to set in when I suggested, "Why don't we make our own play dough train set?" ...

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Fall Invitations to Play: Play Dough Pumpkin Patch Train from Play Trains! http://play-trains.com/

Play Dough Pumpkin Patch Train — Fall Invitations to Play

I'm very excited to be part of a series of Fall Invitations to Play this week. Along with four of my blogger friends -- Ann from My Nearest and Dearest, Stephanie from Twodaloo, Shaunna from Fantastic Fun and Learning, and Chelsey from Buggy and Buddy -- we'll be sharing five ways to invite kids to ...

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Tree Track: Learning About Trees with Wooden Train Tracks @ Play Trains! http://play-trains.com/ The Little Engineer, at 2.5 years old, was enthralled with the whole process for a good hour and a half, and learning about art, biology, and planning and executing a project the whole time! Based on the art installation, "Tree Track", by Christien Meindertsma.

Learning About Trees with Wooden Train Tracks

As I was watching the Little Engineer buzz up and down today's special layout in his room, I realized we somehow managed to learn about art, biology, planning and executing a project, and gross and fine motor skills, all with a pile of wooden train tracks. If I hadn't already been excited about the ...

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Sand Tracks: Learning with Trains at the Beach @ Play Trains! This activity combines art, science, and sensory play, demonstrating one of the technical pages between chapters in the first book of the Peter's Railway series. These books are perfect for train-loving children of any age!

Sand Tracks: Train Beach Activity Inspired by Peter’s Railway

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 ...

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Pool Noodle Train Tracks: Summer Train Fun for Kids @ Play Trains! Kids can build these train tracks, then add a sprinkler to cool off in an "engine wash."

Summer Fun for Kids: Pool Noodle Train Tracks

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 ...

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Railroad Word Crash: Train Reading Practice Game @ Play Trains!

Train Reading Game: Railroad Word Crash

While I was taking photos for Word Family Freight Yard, my guest post on Train Up a Child, the Little Engineer was not entirely enthused about doing the activity.  While we had happily played this train reading game together in the past, this time he wanted to use his regular wooden train freight, ...

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Angry Birds Space Letter and Word Crash with Thomas and Cranky

One of our favorite elements to add to train play is light.  We have a tub full of various LED lights to play "Night Train" with, and I'll have to tell you all about them another time.  Today, we have something a little more...epic to play. It started when I came across Caution! Twins at Play's ...

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Painting with Trains on Canvas

Painting with trains or other toys with wheels is nothing new -- and this certainly wasn't the first time we did it -- but here's the Little Engineer's latest twist on it.  His ideas led the project deeper into the realm of pretend play, and resulted in a pretty cool end product. Not that the ...

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About Me

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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