Train Track Word Building

Got a train lover? I've got the perfect hands-on literacy activity for you! Train Track Word Building will have your little engineer practicing their letter sounds, spelling, and word building. Best of all, you can adapt this alphabet activity in all kinds of ways. Make it easier or harder depending on your child's reading level. Take the lead or let your children do the building. Most importantly, have fun with your kids while learning!

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We recently received a copy of Old Tracks, New Tricks for review. The book was written by Jessica Petersen, the blogger behind Play Trains!, and is fantastic for inspiring creative train play. Immediately after we read the book, and after sitting untouched in our closet for months, our train set came out again! It got my daughters and me thinking about all kinds of new ways to use our train tracks. Since we have a beginning reader in the house, this word building activity was a bit hit.

All you need for this activity is:

Write letters on the little circle stickers.

Stick them onto the middle of your train tracks. You'll need to fold the edges down into the tracks, and they may not stick firmly. It's okay. We only put letters onto the shorter track pieces, so that it blending letter sounds would be easier. Make sure that the tracks are all oriented the same direction when you put the stickers on so that they'll connect correctly.

Start to put some words together!

Or let your kids put words together.

After you've made some words, have your child drive a train over the word as they sound it out. They'll say each letter sound as they come to each letter, blending the sounds as they go.

You can make your words short or long, depending on how well your child is reading. It's easy to change out letters to work on CVC words, word families, sight words, phonics, or spelling lists.