The Little Engine That Could

The Little Engine that Could inspired this fun project!  

My Kindergarten students have been spending the last few weeks working on Trains!  We read The Little Engine that Could which the kids really enjoyed and it sent such a great message- You can do anything you put your mind to!  So we set our minds to making great Train Scenes. 

The first concept we talked about was Line!  I asked the students what Kind of Lines Mountains were ... We eventually worked our way to Zig Zag Lines.  We used our fingers to make zig zag lines in the air.  THe students seemed to really enjoy this .  NOw for the Hard part- Making the lines on the paper!  After a little adjusting, we got our mountain Lines in!  To try something new, We used Coffee grounds to "paint" our mountains.  Boy What a strong aroma that made!  The Background was decoupage Tissue Paper, and the Track was made with textured paint rollers.

   Do not fret.. These projects took a few weeks- especially the modge podge!  As the students were modge podging, I had one table at a time do their tracks. The modge Podging was especially difficult because these young artists had to manipulate their tissue paper squares to slant along their mountain lines without covering their mountains! 

 The students traced circles and cut out their own train wheels.. another tedious step- This was their first time cutting in art so a scissor safety lesson was in store!  NExt the kids had to put their trains together!  This Practiced their hand eye Coordination.  While looking at a model, the students had to figure out how to arrange the train.  We repeated Little Tiny Dots of Glue oh so many times yet we still had a student or two covered in glue

The kindergarteners colored in a worksheet of fun toys  for the last train car and glued black sand onto a cart to represent coal.  A cotton Ball was glued to the top of their smoke stack and ta dah!~ THey made their trains!  A pleasing picture that covered many essential skills!