Painting with Trains! Simple Process Art for Kids

Painting with trains! Yay! Welcome to the new edition of the Poppins Book Nook, a virtual book club connecting books with art projects and learning activities!  Last month we leaned how to make these cute Bird Feeders and this month is all about “Planes, Trains, & Automobiles!”

Since trains are a favorite here we headed to the book shelf and the girls pulled out every train book we had before settling on Freight Train by Donald Crews!  To go along with this book, truly one of our favorites, we did some painting with trains!!

Painting with Trains! Process Art for Kids

We started this activity by reading Freight Train by Donald Crews. My daughter loves this book and we read it nearly every night before bed.  If you haven’t read it you should definitely pick it up if you have a toddler or preschooler in your family!  It’s simple for kids to follow along with and features bright colors and I love how the train cars all have lots of detail.  There’s not a lot of text, just simple wording emphasizing colors and train car names.

Now onto the art project: Painting with Trains!!

Since art projects are high on my daughter’s interest list I decided to expand on this book through some good old fashion painting! She and the daycare kids all love finding new ways to paint and create so I decided rather than paint train pictures we should paint with trains!

All you needs is some paper, paint, and toy trains and you’re ready to go!

We talked about the train in the story, how it was slow in the beginning (so we could read about each car and look at the colors) but then went fast and how different it looked in each situation.  Then the girls recreated that with their trains, going fast and slow then comparing the tracks and prints it made.

Each of the kids loved this art project! We ended up with a wall full of train paintings as each kid made at least three paintings!

Have you painted with trains?

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