Thomas the Tank Engine! (Thomas and Friends)

Thomas the Tank Engine is my son's favourite toy. It started with his aunt giving him a VCD as a present. The show seems boring to us, but he was watching it with great interest. We seldom bought him "non-value-added" (non-educative) toys, but on his 2-year-old birthday, we bought a basic set of Thomas train under the TOMY series for him as a present.

He was very excited and together we built the train tracks. He pushed the Thomas train over the tracks and we said "Peep! Peep!". From his happy face we knew instantly that the purchase was worth it. From then onwards, we started buying Thomas "goods" for him.


As he is interested in anything related to Thomas, it is actually easy for us to motivate him on certain activities. For example, buying Thomas books encourages him to read - in fact, he was potty-trained by reading Thomas books! We bought him Thomas jigsaw puzzles to train him to focus and develop his patience. As a result, at the age of 4 plus, he was already solving 100-pieces of jigsaw puzzles at ease. Nevertheless, he showed less interest to play the non-Thomas jigsaw puzzles. :) When we want to reward him behaving well, we also use Thomas goods as a gift to encourage him. Throughout the years, other than the VCDs, train sets and story books, he has had birthday cake, stickers, bag, towel, stationary, clothings, all with "Thomas"! Luckily in Singapore, there are quite some choices on affordable Thomas goods.

Later we learnt that actually Thomas is a very "value-added" (educative) toys.

• It helps to develop motor skills (putting the tracks together and pushing the train).
  
• By watching the VCD and reading the books, he improved his English language.
• It encourages imagination. My son always murmured to himself when pushing the train, and repeating what he heard in the TV programs.
• It encourages creativity through designing of the tracks. Over the years, my son learnt to do it all by himself and now at 6 years old, he is already an expert in designing the tracks including bridges.

As he loves this toy very much, we also taught him to take good care of the toys and always clean up and put them back after playing. His sister, being influenced by him, is also a big fan of Thomas. When she was a few months old, she started watching her brother play Thomas. One of her first words was "Percy" (one of Thomas' friends) and before she reached the age of 2, she had already recognized all the major characters in Thomas and Friends (Thomas, Percy, James, Gordon, Henry). Although she is a girl, I don't mind at all that she plays trains or cars. To me, it's much better than Barbie dolls.

Children learn most effectively through play. Both my children have certainly benefited from being fans of Thomas. I also fulfilled my childhood dream to own an electric train :). Actually, it's really fun to build tracks and play the train sets, even for adults.