It’s Harvest Time with Tractor Mac!

Apple Picking Story & Craft: Craft Project inspired by Tractor Mac Harvest Time. Includes a free printable.

Apple Picking Story & Craft: Craft Project inspired by Tractor Mac Harvest Time. Includes a free printable.

We’ve had some intermittent cooler days in upstate New York lately, which leads me to one conclusion… Fall is approaching fast! My in-laws are trying to iron out details for a family apple picking excursion which has me pulling all our apple books out for the season. I came across this adorable series recently at the grocery store. I couldn’t help picking up the cute harvest theme book from the Tractor Mac series, knowing that #thelittleone is all about cars, trucks, and diggers right now.

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Tractor Mac Harvest Time is written and illustrated by Billy Steers. The particular edition I picked up includes two sheets of themed stickers inside the covers as well, making it an extra fun choice for young readers. The insides of the front and back covers also had diagrams of tractors, which really engages budding tinkerers and engineers. My boys love naming the parts of things, especially big machines like tractors!

Steers has filled the book with bright, watercolor-y illustrations. The vibrant, autumnal shades throughout are perfect for any fall story time. The story itself is a silly one, about a red tractor named Mac who just isn’t the right size to go out apple picking in the orchard. His big frame accidentally knocks the trees and apples rain down on poor Mac. Kids will love the expressive faces Steers is able to portray on Mac. His wide headlight eyes clearly depict his shock as fruit falls, and the faces carry on through out the tale.

After reading about Tractor Mac’s harvest, I was inspired to create a craft project for my boys to get them in the apple picking spirit.

Materials:

• Tractor Mac inspired free printable. [See below]
• Crayons, colored pencils, or markers.
• Craft paints in apple shades- we used red, green, and yellow. (Acrylic or tempera work well).
• Optional: pencil with a new eraser.
  • Flat, clean pencil erasers make perfect stamps for small apples in this project, but there’s no reason you can’t use a fingertip or q-tip instead.
• Not interested in clean up? Just stick with coloring and draw the apples onto Tractor Mac instead!

Apple Picking Craft with Tractor Mac

• Print your free printable tractor coloring sheet. [See below]
• Add color to your page.
• Dip eraser, q-tip, or fingertip into paints and add ‘apples’ all over Tractor Mac and the apple tree.
• Allow to dry completely.

This project is the perfect accompaniment to such a cute fall harvest book. Tractor Mac’s silly mishaps trying to pick apples has us in the mood to head out to the orchards soon ourselves!

A Little Fine Motor Fun

We also used the apple erasers from our apple picking math activity with this picture book. My youngest enjoyed placing the red and green apple manipulatives on the corresponding apples in each illustration. He especially loved placing them all over Mac as he tried to maneuver through the orchard!

Have you Ever Gone Apple Picking? Is It A Fall Tradition For Your Family?

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