Flip Fast! High-Speed Trains

Just how fast is a high-speed train? Design your own train, then move it at amazing speed through your own flip book.

• 1.

  <STRONG>Read about high-speed trains</STRONG>. Learn why so many countries use them. High-speed trains have a futuristic, aerodynamic styling. The cars are semi-permanently attached with two ends of adjacent cars resting on a shared two-axle truck. Shinkansen, Japanese bullet train lines, opened in 1964, were the first high-speed railways. Acela (acceleration excellence) trains whiz between Washington, D.C., Boston, and New York City. Europe’s Eurostar connects London and Paris. What else can you discover about these ingenious inventions?

• 2.

  <STRONG>Find out about flip books</STRONG>. Study the secret to making drawings seem to move. When making your flip book, work from the page next to the cardboard back to the front of the pad. You will flip from back to front.

• 3.

  <STRONG>Make a high-speed train flip book</STRONG>! Use Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencils to draw a simple high-speed train on cardboard. With Crayola Scissors cut around the train. This will be your stencil. Place the very front of the train stencil on the last page of a small note pad. Trace it. Lift the stencil, open the next page, and place the stencil down about the width of a toothpick in front of where it was before. Repeat tracing until the entire train can be seen on the page. Flip the pages on your pad and watch your train in motion.

• 4.

  <STRONG>Fill the background</STRONG>. Use Crayola Watercolor Paints to create background scenery on each page. How does the scene change? Cover your art area with newspaper. Use a damp Crayola Watercolor Brush to paint horizontally over the scenery. The blurred result will help to achieve a high-speed effect. Air-dry the scenery.

• 5.

  <STRONG>Color your trains</STRONG>. Outline each train with a black Crayola Fine Line Marker. Liveries are trademark designs that identify different trains. Europe’s Eurostar has a blue roof and bright yellow front. America’s Amtrak has horizontal red, wh

Benefits

• Students research how and why high-speed trains were developed and where they are found today.
• Students gather information about how to make flip books.
• Students apply what they learn to create their own high-speed train flip books.

Adaptations

• Assessment: Children demonstrate their flip books and explain their choice of livery.
• Use maps to trace high-speed train routes. Choose a train, then research the culture and history of cities and regions on its route. Imagine that you are riding the train. Write and sketch journal entries describing what sights you see as you travel.
• Maglev (magnetic levitation) test trains are being developed all over the world. Their top speeds are more than 500 kph (300 mph). Discover how they work and what advantages they have over conventional trains. Design a poster, plan a commercial, or devise an advertising campaign to convince an audience of the environmental, safety, and economic benefits of this new technology.
• Use train speeds, distances between cities, and arrival and departure times to create math problems. Write and illustrate a problem on index cards. Exchange, solve, and discuss the problems, and then store them in a recipe box.