You’re on the Right Track

As part of our transportation unit each year, we travel to our local train station and take the train to the next stop. From there we take the bus to the airport where there is an observation tower by the runway to watch planes take off and land. This field trip is easily one of my favorites. I used to take the train all the time in college to get from my dorm to the airport to fly home, but for most people taking the train is a rare opportunity and most kids haven’t been on a train before our trip.

Since the transportation unit comes pretty early in the year, I thought it would be fun to start the year with that theme as well for our “welcome” display. To start I created an engine and some train cars for the outside hallway display. The train track was just strips of black construction paper resting on green bulletin board paper for the grass. For the background I stretched a long rectangle of blue bulletin board paper and place the green paper and train tracks on top. I also added a sun with a smiley face because apparently I am really a kid at heart.)

To make the train I cut a silhouette of an engine out of black paper. Then, for each car I used a 12” x 18” sheet of colored construction paper and then added two black wheels at the bottom. I put several children’s names on each of the cars and wrote across the top in “smoke” letters:  “You’re on the Right Track in Kindergarten!” After the first week of school I put each child’s picture next to their name on the “kindergarten train.”

I actually ended up liking the train so much that I saved it and transferred into my room the next year. In this room we had these huge soffits that came down around the middle of the classroom. I hated the big bare spaces but had never gotten up to put anything there. That summer I made the same outdoor background using bulletin board paper and attached it to the soffit using stapes and glue. Then I attached the train so it looked as if it was running across the soffit. I made each car a different color and as part of our color unit the kids found and attached different representation of that color to the correct car on the color train. Classic teacher - we can reuse anything under the sun, which is probably why we save everything as well!