At-Home Activities: Trains

We have created sensory-friendly at-home activities related to trains that will keep your family engaged and learning beyond our sensory-friendly programming. These resources have connections to The Henry Ford, as well as a variety of other activities. They can be used at any time and in any combination. Please feel free to contact accessibility@thehenryford.org with any questions or suggestions.

After watching the video, take some time to talk about what you saw. Use the following questions as a guide:

• Which train was your favorite? Why was it your favorite?
• What similarities did you see between the trains?
• What differences did you see?
• If you were to make your own train, what would it look like? What special features would it have?

After learning about some unique trains from the video and talking about what your train might look like, create your own unique trains with this craft:

• Create train cars using different colored painted fingerprints. After they dry, add more details to the fingerprints using pens and markers.
• Encourage individuals to use what they know about trains to draw in the parts of their trains (i.e. what a caboose looks like, where the smoke comes from).

Participants will use the fingerprint trains that they have created, and make them into conversation trains in order to practice conversation with new and unfamiliar people.

• Using a train as a metaphor for a conversation. People take turns talking on a topic. People listen and answer back and forth. They can both change the topic if they both want to.
• Use trains to teach the important social and conversation skills
• Ask participants to have their train cars "talk to each other."
• What does a good conversation look like?
• What would an unsuccessful conversation look like? What would make it unsuccessful?
• As participants are thinking about these conversations, practice both good and bad conversational skills so the difference is clear.

Here are some places in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village that you can visit to learn more about trains

Railroads in Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation

Allegheny Steam Locomotive
Railroad Refrigerator Car
Bangor and Aroostook Railroad Passenger Coach Replica
Canadian Pacific Snow Plow
"Sam Hill" Steam Locomotive
Ingersoll-Rand Number 90 Diesel Locomotive

Daily Museum Activities:
Model Train Demonstration

Railroad Junction in Greenfield Village

Weiser Railroad Ride
Detroit, Toledo, and Milwaukee Railroad
Torch Lake Steam Locomotive
Baldwin Locomotive
Smiths Creek Depot
Railroad Turntable