Red train
When a child has chosen the red train as their safe anchor, putting it down for a meal or for bed becomes extra hard. The visual support below shows that the train will come back, and what happens in between.
Red train
A red toy locomotive pulling two carriages.
About this visual support
A red train can look like any other toy, but for the child it is often the fixed point the whole game is built around. That is exactly why it gets hard when someone says the train has to be put away for a while, because it feels like leaving something important without knowing if it will return.
Visual support helps by showing the whole arc: the train now, what happens in between, and the train again afterwards. When the child sees a picture of the train waiting on the shelf and a picture of fetching it later, the goodbye becomes short rather than final. The change is less about stopping play and more about a break with a set ending.
One concrete tip: give the train its own little parking spot in a picture, a shelf or a basket where it gets to wait. Putting the train in that exact place becomes something the child can do themselves, which turns moving on into an active step rather than something taken away from them.
If you want to gather play's transitions on your phone, there is Routined. The pictures here are yours to download and print.