Tractor Painting the Letter T

We have a field trip planned to go and visit a friend who has a small hobby farm. Farming and farm animals has been a recent topic in my home daycare.  We read the book “The Red Tractor” and then decided to extend the theme of the book into a painting activity.

The tractor in the book gets stuck in a pond but we decided our tractors were going to get stuck in the mud.  I gathered a few toy tractors and some brown paint.

The kids drove the tractors through the paint tray and then onto their papers.  We compared the different tire track marks each different size of tractor made.  The children also noticed the difference between the front tire marks compared to the back tires.

I have some parents who are keen to have their preschoolers learn their letters this year so I have incorporated some letter learning activities into our play-based preschool program.

T is for Tractor! The children cut out and coloured a picture of a tractor.  They pasted it onto their letter T page.  The letter T was traced using a small toy tractor with its wheels dipped in brown paint.

This enjoyable activity helped the children link up an abstract concept (the letter T) to a hands-on activity they experienced with all their senses. As we cleaned up the painting activity we sang the Wheels on the Bus Song but we substituted TRACTOR for BUS.

The wheels on the tractor go up and down, up and down, up and down……..

The kids got very silly making up their own verses to this song!