Stations without trains

My eldest started school in August and has been loving the experience so far, she talks a lot about what they do every day and in particular kept mentioning that they use stations.  Intrigued I enquired further and she explained we'd need to set up 4 different activities then have a set time at each one before choosing which one to move to next, with the person leading the group being the train driver.  It sounded simple enough so this afternoon since it was wet we decided to give it a go.

We discussed what toys we'd like to play with and set up all the stations in the living room, in one corner we had the kitchen toys set up, which they used like a cafe, making each other dinner and drinks.

In another we set up a little table for drawing and colouring

In the next corner we had all the dollies and two prams out for them to play with.

And finally we had a game set up, called tummy ache for us all to play together.

We split into two groups and I picked a train driver for each one, then we decided which station we'd like to visit first.  Then I set a timer for 10 minutes and it was time to play.  I will admit I was sceptical about how well it would work and there was a little bit of mixing between stations, seems the dollies were hungry and wanted to visit the cafe!  But I was very impressed at how it helped then focus on a particular toy/activity, in particular they all really enjoyed their turn playing the game, whereas normally it can be tricky to get them to concentrate long enough to complete a game.  I think it's definately a approach which we will be revisiting in the future.