Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Name Trains

We made trains today to go along with our transportation theme. I got the idea to do Name Trains from PreKinders. First I cut squares from all different colors of construction paper. Then I used stencils to make letters on the squares.
The kids first drew a railroad track onto large white construction paper. (I cut them in half the long way.) Then they drew in a background.
After that came the letter search. The kids had to find all the letters in their name and put them on the track behind an engine. Once they had it all laid out, they glued it down. Only one name didn't fit onto the paper (Caroline), so we just glued on another piece of paper to the end. I also cut out a bunch of circles from black construction paper for the wheels.
The kids really enjoyed putting their trains together. They also colored the engine and added more of a background if they wanted to.

 
10/14/12 UPDATE:
We made these again this year and they turned out so cute, I wanted to share them again. What I did differently was have the kids use whole pieces of construction paper so they could draw more of a background. And the engines were bigger this year, as well.







15 comments:

Unknown said...

OH MY GOSH, this is the coolest!! I love how colorful they are.

Betsy said...

Thanks! Rachel, your comments are so fun to read!

The Monko said...

Wow, my son would love this - he is always getting me to draw trains.

KellyL said...

Fabulous idea - I can't wait to try this with my preschool class during Transportation Week

The Wyler Family said...

What a fun idea! Thanks for sharing!

Amanda said...

Love this idea. I am going to do it tomorrow with my two children to go along with T is for train! Thanks for sharing.

~Amanda lovinglearner.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

Awesome!! Thanks for the Idea :)

The Activity Mom said...

I included your craft idea in my Polar Express Themed Activities: http://activity-mom.com/2013/11/26/polar-express-themed-activities/

Alicia said...

Where did you find your train template?

Betsy said...

Alicia, I used this coloring sheet and just resized it.
http://www.sherriallen.com/coloring/images/train8.gif

Anonymous said...

This is a cute idea. I shared this post on my blog's facebook and twitter pages.

https://www.facebook.com/HomeIsWhereIBelong
https://twitter.com/jewels0588

Betsy said...

Glad you like it, Heartloveshome. Thank you for sharing it!

whitney said...

So cute, I am putting a link to this page on my blog for my Things that Go post tomorrow on mommypractice.com

Pleiades said...

This is great. I used this craft with my twins in conjunction with the actual Montessori Name Train Toy. I was able to teach them how they spell their name in just a few days! Now, they use the Name Train to play along and see what they can spell when they combine the letters of their two names :)

Betsy said...

That's awesome, Pleiades! Thanks for sharing that!