An American Flag for Independence Day: A Two and Three Year Old Lesson

This preschool art lesson is a really simple American flag that you could use for Fourth of July. I did this lesson with my two-year-old class and they loved it.  It uses a car dipped in paint to create the red stripes in the flag and a q-tip in white for the stars.  Children love using novel things to paint with and they especially love getting to drive a car back and forth to spread paint.  

Materials:
blue and white construction paper
glue1
scissors
red and white paint
a q-tip
a toy car

Preparation:
If your children are young like my class is, precut the blue rectangle for them.  If they are capable of cutting it themselves outline a rectangle for them.  Since the car being driven across the paper is the motion being used to spread the paint this can get a little messy toward the edges of the paper.  If you prefer you could place the paper in an aluminum pan or spread newspaper or butcher paper on the table.

Link for Our YouTube Video Tutorial:

This is how the flag turned out from one of my two-year-old students:

Art provides so many benefits to preschool children.  As I am now a two-year-old early childhood educator, I realize how little there is out there for this age group lesson plan wise.  Many of my current and upcoming videos concentrate on this age group in order to fill in this gap and provide other preschool teachers, parents, or babysitters with fun art to do with their child or children that is developmentally appropriate.  All of the art lessons we post for children can be easily modified for age or skill.  Please ask or share how you did!

Fine Motor Activities::Preschool Color Matching Lesson

The following lesson is designed to aid children with their fine motor skills using clothespins and teach color matching.  I used the cans for the purpose of self-containing the lesson (Montessori style) so that my two-year old class could have the chance to choose what they work on and take it from the shelf without it being difficult to carry.  You could do many variations on this lesson.  I did have to modify it myself as it turned out the clothespins were too difficult for my students aside from the oldest twos.  I switched out the clothespins for squares of paper with the colored dots that I had laminated and attached velcro, in a way maintaining the two fold purpose of the lesson.  As I have used these containers for many different lessons, they can also be used to correspond with monthly themes.  In the past I have made matching cards using stickers with velcro backs that the children use to match (insects, ocean life, dinosaurs) while placing the cards inside the can for easy storage afterwards.

Materials:

- Baby formula can

- Cardstock 

- Items to match (colored dots, stickers, etc)

- Clothespins/Velcro depending on the ability of your child/students

- Packaging tape

Preparation:

Tape one set of the item to be matched around the can while the other set is used on the end of the clothespin.  If you are doing squares of card stock with a matched item, I suggest laminating it for durability and hot gluing it to the clothespin.  As I said with my class I had to modify the lesson by getting rid of the clothespin and laminating a card stock square with the dots on them to be matched by velcro.


Our YouTube Video demonstrating the process: