Freight Train by Meghan (and Donald Crews)

We made a paper freight train based on the wonderful book by Donald Crews. We used the book to help us know which car/color would come next. I had the cars precut into the appropriate shape. I also had the track drawn on the paper ahead of time.




Meghan really enjoyed telling me which color would come next with almost no prompting.




This is Meghan waiting for me to get the black paint for the wheels.


She chose to use crayons for the smoke. She was so precise with where it went. This was our second train, so I didn't tell her where to put it. She knew.



The wheels are made with her little fingerprints. Yes, the yellow hopper car is upside down.



This is quite large. I thought two inch wide cars would be a good size. It wasn't until after I had cut them out and was placing them on the paper that I realized that there was no room for the black tender! An inch would have been large enough!

For another similar, yet different Freight Train project, visit my friend Jennifer at My Two Happy Homeschoolers!

Sometimes I wonder if I am trying to do too much with Meghan, but she really enjoys paper crafts! We had a lot of fun completing this project, and when we were done she wanted more. Tomorrow you can see a "train" she made without any help from me!

Brown Bear Eye Spy Bottle

Here is another Brown Bear, Brown Bear activity. We used this site for the template for the pictures. You can go there for the directions. It's kind of neat because the animals are all the same color as they are in the book, so Meghan is used to the match-ups.

I have seen these called "I Spy" and "Eye Spy." I prefer the "I" but the title of the game used "Eye." Maybe someone can clarify for me.

I had been wanting to do this for a long time, but did not have a hot glue gun until recently.

Meghan loves the book; however, she doesn't seem to be so fond of this game. She played it with me for a bit, but hasn't shown real interest in it on her own. Evan likes the bottle though.

This is just a regular, cheap water bottle. It is really weak. If it was getting a lot of physical abuse from Meghan, it probably wouldn't last too long.

I can say that Meghan enjoyed making the bottle with me. The rice was fun. She told me what each animal was and the color before placing them in the bottle. I will warn you that if you are having a toddler put the pictures in the bottle, you might want to count them to be certain all the critters make it into the bottle before using hot glue on the lid. Our white dog didn't make it into the bottle.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear Activities

1+1+1=1 is a great resource for me (and you if you have young children). I already showed our Veggie Tale tot book. This is the same idea, but I didn't put this one in a folder/book.



We began by reading the great book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See. Meghan is now able to fill in a lot of the words in the book such as the animal names and the words "see" and "me." It's a great book for us to read together.











Here you see Meghan matching heads and tails of animals from the book. She really got into this activity.









Meghan didn't enjoy the numbers so much, but I wasn't surprised. She did it, but just wasn't very interested.

Meghan enjoyed reading the special little book, too. In addition, there is a book for her to color and other activities, too!

Check out the Brown Bear activities and other tot-books here. They are worth it! Since they were just printed on paper, I used my little laminator to make these durable.