Learning Together: Mailing May & Freight Train

 We just wrapped up Mailing May (for Jack) and Freight Train (for Alice).

Mailing May is based on the true story of a little girl who was mailed to her grandma's house for a visit.  We started our lessons on the 99th anniversary of her trip!

 

 This book that we checked out from the library had an interesting section on old mail trains that went right along with the story.

 This Bobbie Kalman book is also a great go-along.  I may or may not have bought this on my honeymoon.  Doesn't everyone go to bookstores and look through children's nonfiction to celebrate their marriage?

 You probably know Rosemary Wells best for Max and Ruby, but she has all kinds of books.  The House in the Mail tells about a girl whose family gets a house kit in the mail.

 We learned a little about stamps and even made our own stamp glue that I'll tell you more about soon!

If you want to see how your mail travels from the post office to its destination, watch the Reading Rainbow episode of Hail to Mail!

 As I shared earlier, we played Rivers, Roads, & Rails just for fun.  I picked this up at a consignment sale for $5 and it was a great buy.

 Alice did some train school, too, though not exactly like Jack did on our first go-round.  She really enjoyed Inside Freight Train which is a fun pull apart companion to Freight Train.

 

 We got out the train I made before and she had a good time lining up the cars to match the ones in the book.

We also put together this alphabet train puzzle several times and then Jack got in on it by hiding some of the letters for her to find.  He would hide them in spots that were related to the letters, like the C train on the cat's bed or the G train on the gate upstairs.  (I linked to Amazon to show a picture but you probably find it other places for less.  I got it for $6.98 on clearance at Target but the original price was only $9.99, so shop around!)

 

 We had The Caboose Who Got Loose from when Jack was little and we picked up Two Little Trains at a book sale last week.  We also really liked Clickety Clack, which I found at our library.

 We worked on T and t with an Alphabet Maze from 1+1+1=1.  Alice enjoys these and I like that all you have to do is hit print!

Alice and  I read a few books about letters, too.

 

To wrap up our time with trains we headed back to Ollie's.

The entire restaurant is full of trains--even over your head on three different tracks!

These don't have anything to do with trains, but I thought they were funny.  That's a gumball in Alice's cheek.

Next up: Angelo and Ask Mr. Bear!