Thomas the Tank Engine, Chuggington, The Dinosaur Train…chances are, if you have a child under the age of 8, you’ve heard of these shows, watched these shows, and perhaps, been a little surprised at just how popular these characters are! I have my own little train enthusiast, who has been absolutely obsessed with trains since infancy! Over the last six years, we’ve acquired a strikingly large collection of toy trains and train sets. They’re the reason there is no storage space left in his bedroom…and honestly, the reason our house is never clean!
While a child’s obsession with trains can be a huge headache sometimes (I mean, how many times can you hear “An idea suddenly flew into his funnel!” or “He was jealous because Sir Topham Hat didn’t choose him to deliver the Special Special Most Special”?), playing with trains and learning about trains can be extremely beneficial for young children.
Building and designing train sets can teach your child valuable problem-solving skills that will be useful for his or her entire life. A child must piece the tracks together in a way that allows the trains to run smoothly, he must learn to avoid obstacles to the tracks such as an area rug or a chair leg, and he must assemble the tracks in such a way that the tracks connect at a certain point. These skills are essential when a child is confronted with problems in life – he needs to have patience, foresight, trial-and-error, planning skills in order to succeed in school and in a future career.
Playing with trains and reading about trains also sparks a child’s creativity and imagination. There are endless ways to assemble train tracks, connect trains together, build cities around the tracks, reenact what the child has seen on a television show or read in a book, and create a new world each time the child drags out the box of trains, tracks, and accessories.
Playing with trains also develops a child’s gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Wheeled toys like trains are great ways to encourage an infant’s motivation to learn to crawl and walk in order to play with the toys. Trains develop fine motor skills as a child grips, pushes, pulls, rolls, and connects trains and tracks together.
Research shows that young children learn through play. Trains give children a chance to experience many forms of play. For example, children can engage in pretend play as they reenact and simulate real life using trains, vehicles they probably have come in contact with in real life, which helps build their knowledge of the world around them. Young toddlers can engage in independent play, using concentration and self-sufficiency to assemble the tracks in a new way or create a new story with the trains. This type of play is common in 2 and 3 year olds. Another type of play common for 3 year olds is parallel play, when two children enjoy playing side by side but not together. Two children could each have their own trains but use the same track, each enacting different stories with little to no interaction with each other. Children could also engage in associative play, when they still play separately from one another but are involved in what the other is doing – for example, using train tracks to assemble two separate railways, communicating with each other during the process and commenting on each other’s constructions. Associative play allows children to build friendships. Lastly, children can engage in cooperative play, using the same set of tracks to build a railway together and engage in a story together using the train toys. This type of play builds fundamental social skills a child will use throughout his life.
Playing with trains and reading about trains can also be beneficial in developing several other skills, such as vocabulary building, imitating noises, construction, prediction, sequencing, counting, and color identification.
Maybe Thomas is a “really useful engine” after all.
Usborne Books has a number of books for train enthusiasts of all ages. Babies will love Baby’s Very First Noisy Book: Trains, a brightly-colored, noise-making, touchy-feely book designed for our youngest readers. Toddlers and preschoolers will love Lift and Look: Trains and Pull Back Busy Train Book, fun and interactive titles designed for hands-on learning. Preschool and elementary-aged children will enjoy Trains- IR, Big Book of Trains, and See Inside Trains, interactive, informational books filled with questions and answers every train lover wants to know!
Each of these titles and more can be ordered from my website: https://c6052.myubam.com/
