Play Train's Coming

Before you begin 

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.    
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.  
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers. 

Planning and setting up this activity 

• You might want to plan in this activity for after the Play train controller crossing activity, which uses first five pages of the book.  
• Lay out some chairs to form a train. Then, mark a yellow line on the floor or ground using chalk, tape or rope.  
• You could play some train station sound effects, to help set the scene.  

Play Train’s Coming  

1. Gather everyone together and explain you’re going to be playing a game about catching a train. Point out the yellow line and the chairs representing the train.  
2. One member of the group is the Station Manager. This person will call out the actions. It could be a young member, young leader or adult volunteer.   
3. Everyone else should stand in the centre of the space, ready to respond to the commands with the appropriate action.  
4. Take time to practice the Station Manager’s commands. You could choose a selection from or all the following:

• • Busy station – walk around 
  • Train arriving – go to stand behind the yellow line (walk don’t run) 
  • Fast train going past  - freeze 
  • Steam train –  “choo choo” noise 
  • Buy a ticket  - pretend to press buttons  
  • Friendly driver – wave towards the train 
  • Mind the gap - big step, imagining you’re getting on the train 
  • Paddington bear – eat a marmalade sandwich from under your hat 
  • Time check – look at wrist  
  • Platform change – swap places with someone else 
  • Train delayed – move in slow motion 

5. Everyone must do the correct action as quickly as they can, but always walking, not running. You could speed up the game as you go along. 
6. You could add a competitive element, such as the last person to do the action being out. The person who’s out can then help the Station Manager call out the commands.  The person left at the end of the game is the winner. 

Destination: reflection

1. Now it’s time to reflect on everything.  To help embed learning, use the 'train' you'd set up to 'travel' to the reflection space.  
2. Use the ‘Train arriving’ command to get everyone waiting sensibly behind the yellow line.  
3. To stagger the group so only a few people onboard at once, read out statements such as “Your name begins with S” or “You’re wearing something blue”. Anyone who matches the statement can get onto the train.  
4. When they hear a statement that applies to them, they should carefully take a big step over a pretend gap onto the train, and sit down on a seat (chair).  
5. Make an announcement like "You have now arrived at the reflection station. Please carefully leave the train on the other side". The passengers then carefully step off the train and start forming a circle, where everyone will sit to reflect.  
6. Repeat until everyone’s back together in the circle, then take some time to reflect as a group. We’ve included some prompt questions in the pink box on this page.