Freight Train — one of Crews’  most famous books and a Caldecott Medal winner was the one we chose for our project this month.  My child LOVED this book when he was younger.  The colors are so bright and he would memorize the few words on each page so that he could read the book to himself when he was very young.

Make Your Own Freight Train

I used tissue boxes and shoe boxes to create our own freight train.

Choose brightly colored construction paper in each of the colors of the train cars.  Wrap and tape the paper around each of the tissue boxes leaving it open at the top so you can easily slip items into the box.

I decided to draw details on each of our train boxes.  You can use the book to design your own train cars – the kids will really enjoy this part of the activity.

For the train engine, I used white chalk on black paper for our design.

Once you have each of the train cars created, read the story and have the kids put the train cars in the correct order.  If you’d like, you can also connect them together with pieces of string.  Then they can drag them around the room and ‘drive’ their train.

Practice Color Matching

Now that you have train cars created for each color, look around the house for brightly colored items.  I chose some crayons, small toys and knick-knacks that would easily fit in our boxes.

Jumble the items together and then have your child choose one item and place it in the train car with the corresponding color.  Make sure to name the color of the item and the train car as they sort the items.  This activity is great for developing small motor skills and learning/reinforcing colors.