A Steam Engine Train

It is unanimous, our Fall Festival Train is a steam engine train!  Now all we need to figure out is how to make our train look like steam is coming out of it just like this picture.  We talked for a LONG time, and we heard suggestions like, "grey legos", "play dough", "paper", and then Trevor put his finger up to his head and said, "DING!!!  I got it!  STUFFING!!!" 

 What a great idea, right?

Luckily we had a bag of stuffing in our room and the boys had so much fun stuffing the engine with "steam".......

They all worked together to glue tissue paper around it to make it look like the book.  They found a bell to put on the train as well, and now all we have to do is figure out where the steam should go on the train.

As the boys were finishing up, one of them said, "It is like smoke!"  We started to have a great conversation about the difference between smoke and steam.....

steam vs smoke

We talked about how smoke comes from fire, and steam comes from hot water.  We also talked about how clouds are made from water and the steam coming out of the train looks like a cloud.  The steam is white and the smoke is grey and black. 

This was a great scientific discussion that stemmed out of this project!  Let's see what else comes out of this train project.