Invitation
X-man decided on a train theme for his 4th birthday party. I created a train ticket invitation. I heard that his friends were very excited about this invitation and that made the effort worth it!
My sister-in-law had another big event to do that weekend, so I consulted with her and made my own cake this time. I was very thankful for her tips and ideas and I was very pleased with how the cake turned out!
My mother-in-law created a very large train out of foam poster board and brought it to decorate our fence. I put an easel with a bulletin board (decorated as a station board) on the porch. I dressed up as a conductor that day. As the kids arrived, I gave them conductor hats to wear. I had purchased a disposable camera that had automatic “Thomas the Tank Engine” borders for each picture, so I took a picture of each child by the train.
Conductor-of-honor
There was a toy train on a table and a Thomas puzzle for the kids to do as they waited for the fun to begin. I had used sidewalk chalk and drawn train tracks all over our walkway and driveway. So we all chugged along together as a train for the first activity. Then the train ran out of coal! They had to toss (black beanbag) coal into the (red wagon) engine! Anyone whose coal made it in received a red hot coal (red jelly bean) as a prize. The next catastrophe was that our train ran out of water! So the conductors all grabbed little buckets (paper cups) and drew water out of the lake (a big green bucket) to pour into the engine. When they had worked together to fill the engine back up, they all received train whistles as a prize!
Finally, they were able to load cargo onto the train (red wagon) and drive it to the next station, at our garage. Each conductor who was old enough took a turn to race the train to the next station.
Then it was time to rest in the shade of our orange tree and listen to the main conductor (me) read The Little Engine that Could. The kids really enjoyed this story and the illustrations were great!
We love this book!
Next, it was lunch time! We had spiral sandwiches for the parents and ham and cheese sandwiches cut into train shapes (thank you cookie cutter!). On the table, we had a big toy train engine and little check boxes covered with black paper as our train cars. The train cars were filled with pretzel stick, celery stick, and carrot stick “logs” and a mound of licorice “coal.” I decorated round sugar cookies with yellow frosting and black RR writing (they looked like the RR signs!). And then the train cake was the star of the lunch show!
I sent the Thomas-bordered pictures of the conductors at the party in the thank you notes. X-man loved his train party! It was so much fun!
Following Footprints 