Her First Masterpiece

This is Meghan's first drawing. After we made the paper train, Meghan wanted to use markers. When I asked her what she was drawing, after a minute she said choo-choo. (I don't know if she had intentions at first. Her first scribble was the blue one. It's quite different than the other "box cars."


You might not be able to see it, but while she was drawing I was amazed at her method.


Can you see the small bits of scribbled color toward the bottom? I think those are the different box cars. When she was drawing the lines across the top she told me they were smoke. (I asked.) The lines on the bottom are tracks! I am impressed at her detail (and attempt at some hard words)!

Above is a picture of all three of our train projects that hang on the fridge. The top is the train made with Meghan's arm. Below is the free art train. At the bottom is the freight train, based on the Donald Crews book.

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!

Train Made with Arm

We've been reading some books about trains. Trains are always a favorite for us. I saw this really neat craft here.

The original was actually much cuter, but it had been a long time since I had looked at it...so ours isn't as cute. More important than cute is that Meghan had fun.

We traced her arm and hand, then cut it into pieces. Meghan colored each part and then the windows and wheels, too after gluing them on the track. This was really a neat idea though.

We had a good weekend with incredible weather. Much of our time was spent outside. Derek has every other Friday off (works long days because of it), and Friday was a work day, so the weekend seemed short.

Is anyone else amazed that June has arrived? Time is flying by! We're trying to make our summer plans including a family vacation and a trip to visit family...and hopefully some time away for just Derek and me.