Thomas the Tank Engine on Safari

This Thomas the Tank Engine Small World activity is quick and simple to set up for any train loving toddler or child. Based on Thomas' Big World Big Adventures Series this will have your toddler playing, developing their speech and using their imagination.

This year I have promised to buy less and reuse many of the toys and resources we already have and that I have previously made. All the resources for this activity were in our toy bag or I had made previously.

Set Up

As mentioned earlier, everything for this activity I already had at home. The grass and sea were dyed rice that I had used in previous activities and the cornflakes were from a farm small world activity. I hate food waste, so at the end of one of these activities I sweep up all the sensory resources and put them back into their respective tupperware containers.

I used our tuff tray, Brio track, Brio trains, Thomas the Tank Engine trains, African animals and plastic aquarium flowers. I also included wooden animals from Lidl Noah’s Ark set and plastic fish that my son had received as a birthday present.

I have used these resources in these activities previously:

Winter Wonderland , Thomas at Christmas , Train Trip to the Beach

Footprints , The Lion Inside , Tiddler the Story Telling Fish

My two year old needed no encouragement to come and play with this Thomas the Tank Engine small world activity. He loved it and spent a good while just exploring all the different areas and animals. Together we chatted about what we could see and feel and what each animal was up to.

There is a Thomas episode when Thomas the Tank Engine gets derailed, ends up in the water and an elephant pushes him back onto the track. My toddler loves this episode and chuckles throughout. Independently my two year old recreated this episode using this small world activity but it wasn’t just the elephant that came to the trains rescue! Each animal had their turn to rescue a train.

I set this activity up in the morning and throughout the day my two year old dipped in and out of it. At the end of the day I carefully swept up all the food resources and put them back in their respective Tupperware boxes to use again in a different activity.