You’ve seen how your kid plays with his wooden trains. He constructs trains and tracks, buildings, bridges, houses. In fact, he’s built an entire city with the play pieces of his wooden train set. You’ve also seen him go choo-choo with his train, zooming it on his tracks with fun and delight.  But if you think that’s all there is to your kid’s wooden train toy, you’re wrong.

Your kid’s wooden train holds a lot more opportunities for other mind and body enriching games that he will have a lot of fun playing with.

Here are other great activity ideas for your kid and his wooden train:

1. Imaginative pretend plays. After your kid has built an entire city and has shown you his creation while beaming with pride, what’s next for him? Well, it’s time for creative and fun-filled imaginative plays wherein your kid can use his wooden train creation to come up with roles and situations he can play in. For example, let him imagine himself to be a conductor of the train he’s built with his Maxim Wooden 145 Piece Train Set or let him be the legendary lion tamer with the Wooden Circus Train Set. This is an activity he can play by himself or with other siblings or friends where his creativity and imagination will surely be enhanced.

2. Wooden train race. After building numerous trains, let the ride be more exciting by engaging your kid in some wooden train race. Watch his adrenaline rush and excitement on his face as you and he go down on your knees in the race track and go head to head in the race for the finish line. This activity is good in honing fine motor skills as he handles the wooden train toy and gross motor skills as he uses his arms, legs and feet in racing the toy train. Furthermore, this activity gives you the opportunity to teach your kid about friendly competition, how to accept losing gracefully or how to acknowledge winning humbly.

3. Where’s the wooden train? Wooden train sets with its many pieces can be used as the treasure for a little game of treasure hunt. Instead of making him and his kid friends find a constructed wooden train set, a variety of this game would be to hide the pieces of the wooden train in different areas of the room, have the kids look for them and then build something out of the things they’ve found. You just have to be cautious though because you may really lose a piece of the toy train during the game. This is an excellent way to develop camaraderie and instil proper cooperative play attitude in your kid. Aside from that this game will enhance his problem solving skills and his resourcefulness.  

4. Build the most creative train contest. This is a nice game if you have many wooden train sets on hand. For each kid, equip him a wooden train set. Whoever builds the most creative one wins. There are some kids who hate losing that’s why it’s important that as early as now you play games like this to show and teach your kid that it’s not always winning that matters but how you play the game. Be sure to shower every kid who joined the game with praises for a job well done so that the ones who didn’t win wouldn’t feel so bad about losing.

Truly, there are more to wooden trains than meet the eye. Explore the endless possibilities for games and activities that would enhance a variety of kid’s skills and make him have a great playtime.