Homemade Toy: Thomas Puzzle

J absolutely loves puzzles.  He also adores anything Thomas!  I LOVE a bargain, so this homemade toy is perfect for both of us.  My goal was to create a Thomas counting puzzle.  I tried finding one to buy and only found a wooden puzzle for $10.  It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, and the price was nowhere NEAR what I was hoping for.  So I made a Thomas counting puzzle myself.

I searched online for images of all the different Thomas trains, hoping to find #1-20.  This was the longest part of the process.  It turns out they aren’t so easy to find which I found odd  considering their popularity.  I also could never find number 13, perhaps they’re superstious and left that one off? **If anyone DOES know of a #13 train, please let me know. **   Our puzzle stops at 12 for now, but I can easily add on to it in the future.

If this works, here’s the link for the pdf I made with all the pictures. Thomas puzzle

The puzzle is meant to be in one long line, I just split it up for the photo

I printed the pictures of each train and glued them (using Mod Podge) onto the back of some small foam puzzle squares I found at the dollar store.  This step took me probably 15 minutes.  I used 2 store-bought puzzless to have enough pieces for trains 1-12. Some of the longer trains take up two puzzle pieces.   

The nice thing is J can also turn the puzzle pieces over and do the store-bought puzzle too.  So 3 puzzles for $2 seems to be a good deal in my book and it was so easy to make!   I think this would be a good homemade Christmas present for toddlers

  Age attempted: 29 months, definitely could be done much earlier

Edited to add: Here’s the list of Thomas trains #1-12.  Since J wants to know their names, I added those on my finished puzzle too.

1 Thomas

2 Edward

3 Henry

4 Gordon

5 James

6 Percy

7 Toby

8 Duck

9 Donald

10 Douglas

11 Oliver

12 Alfie

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