Trains for kids

What's here

Twelve trains and train things, from a puffing steam engine to a bullet train with a nose like a paper airplane. There's a subway that whooshes underground, a trolley that ding-dings down the street, and a little handcar you pump by hand. Tap any of them and it rolls, puffs, or dings while telling your toddler one true thing about itself. Train kids are famously thorough, so we made sure the caboose got its due.

Meet these first

• Steam Engine, who puffs big clouds of smoke and goes chugga-chugga down the track
• Bullet Train, whose long, pointy nose lets him zoom so fast it's almost like flying
• Caboose, the friendly little car at the very end of a long train
• Subway Train, who whooshes through tunnels deep underground in the city
• Trolley, the little street train who ding-dings his bell as he rolls along
• Handcar, the tiny car you pump up and down by hand to make it go
• Snowplow Train, who pushes deep snow off the tracks so other trains can pass
• Mine Cart, who rolls on little tracks deep inside a mine, full of sparkly rocks
• Circus Train, who carries all the fun of the circus from town to town

How to play (60 seconds)

Start with the classic: tap the steam engine and chugga-chugga together, slow at first, then faster and faster. Then play opposites. Ask your toddler to find the fastest train (bullet train) and the slowest one (that poor handcar), and say "fast" and "slow" in matching voices, quick and squeaky for one, long and stretchy for the other. End at the train station and wave hello and goodbye to the trains hopping on and off. One minute, and you've covered fast, slow, hello, and goodbye.

Good to know

Trains hand you word pairs for free: fast and slow, first and last, up and over, under and through. The caboose is always last, the engine is always first, the subway goes under and the monorail goes over. Pointing that out while you tap turns a train page into a little parade of position words. If you'd like a paper version for the waiting room, the free Starter Pack of first-words cards is on our printables page at /printables.

Keep exploring

When the trains have all been tapped twice, roll into vehicles for planes and fire trucks, big-trucks for the highway crowd, construction-trucks for diggers, or wind down with bedtime after a long day on the rails. The homepage has everything in one place.