Drawing diagrams of trains and keeping carriages in order

My three year old likes to have his train built in a certain way. He can get very upset when it is broken or when we have to put it away. I had been thinking of a way to help him with this and came up with a matching and sorting activity. We have a wooden train with 13 carriages and engines of four different colours. Using paper and crayons I showed my son how we could draw a diagram of the train and record how the carriages are positioned.

Boy with train carriage

First we organised all the carriages according to colour. B loves catagorising things at the moment and enjoyed seeing them all lined up neatly.

Then we counted them and drew the right number of boxes on a piece of paper.

Diagram ready to be coloured

Then B built a train. Together we coloured the boxes, well, I did most of the colouring. He prefers line drawings at the moment. I decided that the idea of the activity was to talk about diagrams, and colouring was a secondary and less important skill at this moment.

Finished train

Then he decided to make a little change. So we drew the boxes again and coloured them accordingly. He was very pleased.

Two slightly different trains

I hope to add to our list of trains in the future, if he builds different trains. But at the moment, he likes them in this order, so in this order they go!

It was lovely to talk about the differences in the carriages and how they should go together.  I’m sure my little boy developed some important skills as we

• talked about colour, shape and size
• created a picture diagram of something real.
• matched carriages as we built a train.

He also get less upset when the train is damaged as he knows it can be easily put together again - in the same order!

Little Red Caboose and Dad Playing Guitar

Painting with Cars

It’s always all about the cars, and then the bus gets involved and then the train shows up. No matter what we do, something with wheels either accompanies us or distracts us. So one day, to avoid distraction, we painted with cars. It was a huge success. It created an interesting piece of art too.

We have a large plastic table cloth, around 1 by 1.5 meters, which we have been using for a long time for just about anything. We like to work on the floor and this large white water-resistant mat has been our canvas for paint, play dough, colouring, cutting, water play and more. On this day it really was our canvas, and I also discovered that the pizza boxes I had thought perfect for painting on were just too small. This boy thinks big and needs a lot of space.

So, with one plastic sheet, paint and a few vehicles, he was off.

First he assigned two colours to each vehicle...

and then watched the paint move and mix as the buses travelled.

 I gave him one rule: Stay on the mat.

There were some amazing patterns in the tracks. He just kept on going round and round and round.

With cars, colours and a clear limit he was happy to make a creative mess. I left him to it.

This is the finished picture.

A few days later we added more paint (and a few more cars!):

The next time he asked if he could stand in the paint. He had a wonderful time ‘ice skating’ across his painting.

(Pic to come)

We plan to keep adding and adding to it.
So, what was the benefit of this mess?

• Practicing lots of fine and gross motor skills
• Watching colours mix and mix again
• Observing the effect of an solid object moved through liquid
• Enjoying creating a big piece of art with his most beloved vehicles

Underground Train

We live in a big city with an underground train. My son loves it. He loves anything associated with trains. He must spend 90 percent of his time playing alone ordering his trains, cars and buses around the room. I decided to do something to add to his playtime which we could work on together. So we built our own U-Bahn (underground train in Berlin).

A while ago I spent an early Saturday morning drawing on a dissembled cardboard box to make a road and car park for all his cars. We took this, some empty toilet rolls and some tape, and started talking about how to go about it. It took a while to put enough rolls in place (it was a big box), and I had to do most of the work as it was a little tricky for a two year old. He started playing with something else in the room as I finished, but once I was done he was very pleased with his new toy.

The rolls looked a little like the pillars we see in some stations, and it was pretty dark under the cardboard so it looked quite realistic. It was a little wobbly, but this made him think carefully about his movements in and around the structure. The road on top became the way into the space inside the train track, where there was a shopping centre and a bus stop, according to him.

I loved watching him move around - on tiptoe, bending this way and that, peeking through the tunnel, reaching in to move the train. He made up a story about a man in a van. All in all, he practiced quite a few skills. These are some I noted:

• He used his limbs in different ways developing his fine and gross motor skills.
• He created stories by himself expanding his imagination and vocabulary.
• He watched me make a whole new level to his play area with a bit of card and some tape increasing his capacity for creative thinking.

We spent the next few days improving on the underground train to make it stronger and more adaptable to changes in the track.

Definite Boundaries

When reading about encouraging creativity, a common theme is allowing kids to make mess. This is not something I am against. In fact I actively encourage it, but then B is not particularly messy. Even so, I like the idea of allowing mess within boundaries, as all art needs a frame - especially a two year old’s first attempts at abstract art.

One lovely sunny afternoon my son was being the artist with his diggers and trucks on the balcony. The dirt I had given him was finding it’s way across the whole area. It was the first time I’d managed to get out there this Spring so I really wanted to give it a good tidy and clean. The mess spread, my sweeping became pointless and my patience was waning.



Then I found the chalk. The previous few days had been all about shapes, so I drew some more for him. A very big square. I called it his mess box and swept all his dirt into it. He then insisted on boxes for all his vehicles. It was a serious task as all vehicles need a good parking place, don’t they? And after that he was happy to play in his mess box long enough for me to clean the balcony.


As he played in his box, I saw how he had to find solutions to his games: Roads had to be rerouted, building sites contained and footsteps carefully placed. I’m not sure, but maybe he made more mess than usual because he had his very own mess box.

B did these things:

• Talked about shapes and sizes when measuring all the boxes we drew
• Found a way to play within a restricted zone
• Moved his body in news ways as he navigated the small(ish) space
• Created new storylines for his diggers, cars and buses
• Gained some confidence in his own independence while he played alone
• Enjoyed making a mess within a set boundary