The love of trains is back. Though we’ve realised it’s more than just trains… it’s length. Alex has always liked building long trains. The number of carriages was his pleasure. It got hard when there were other kids around, we just thought he was not ready to share and similar preschool issues. But we’ve since worked out that it’s more than that.
Recently we went to a model train expo – the biggest of the year in Victoria. We spent 4 long hours there. Alex worked his way around the expo until he found the train with the longest haul. We counted many carriages that day – which was great as Alex has liked counting and hearing me count but got mixed up at certains tens carrying over so this has actually helped him without rote learning (that we didn’t do anyway). This particular train had 63 carriages, and I think Alex would have spent at least 2 hours just looking at this one display. In the run up to this event, Alex chose to watch model trains on his iPad – said he was ‘preparing’ which was quite amusing to hear him research without being told/advised/alluded to. Once we worked out that it was length of trains and not the trains themselves that he liked (which explains why the train museum was not that fascinating to him as it was just the engines on display) then I found the Guinness record holder of model train length. This video takes nearly 30 mins to watch the whole train pass. Alex has watched it multiple times!
In light of our ‘moment’, it’s probably a good time to realise that the snakes love is also length related since the ‘longest snake ever’ was always something Alex asked about. He knows that reticulated pythons are the title holders and has told us that he would like one as a pet. Not likely, at least not yet. We have the annual reptile expo next week to go to so I wonder if he’ll hunt for the longest snake he can find: he’s already asked me if they will have one there!
A few days ago Alex added to the measuring wall 2 toys to see who was taller. This interest in size has brought out the tape measure a few times and Alex’s language in terms of measurement is quite familiar.
So what next? On reserve at the library is the Guinness World Records book for us to look through. Let’s see where the trains and snakes take us…
