A preschool Thanksgiving art lesson on the Mayflower. The boat is drawn using water soluble oil pastels which can be spread using a paint brush dipped in water. This is a great lesson to correspond with the holiday and teaching about lines and shapes. Be sure to talk about the different shapes that can be used to create parts of the picture. Materials: - water soluble oil pastels - white paper - paint brush - water Preparation: Print out a picture of the Mayflower to use it to discuss the Pilgrims journey. Ask your child what shapes they notice in the boat. Our YouTube Video Demonstrating the Lesson:
A wetu is a Wampanoag temporary house built of red cedar sticks and grass. The Wampanoag tribe shared in the first Thanksgiving feast with the Pilgrims. This is a drawing lesson that uses lines and shapes to create a simple holiday picture. Materials: - Crayola drawing chalk or chalk pastels - Blending stump or q-tips The following is our YouTube video demonstrating the process:
How to make a play dough mat from construction paper to encourage working on shapes. Play dough is a great fine motor activity and you can make play dough mats for any theme or holiday. Write or type prompts to direct specific skills you want to build on. These can also be made using clip art and a word document. I get my assistants to make our play dough mats at school using construction paper since it is less time consuming and readily available.
Materials:
-scissors
-glue
-construction paper
-card stock
-laminator and laminating sheets
Preparation:
Come up with an idea for your play dough mat. It is best to mount the pictures on card stock especially if you work with young kids to make it more durable. Laminating is a must as well!
This is a really simple Halloween art idea that can easily be completed by children as young as two. We talked about fall harvest items this week such as apples, squash, and gourds. Our parents brought in gourds for the children to be able to examine and afterwards each child painted a gourd to bring home. They loved this art project! Materials: -gourd -acrylic paint (white and black) -paint brushes -newspaper to cover work area Preparation: Prepare your work space by covering it with newspaper or art mats if you have them available. Place the white acrylic paint into a container. As you will have to wait for the white paint to dry you can hold off putting out black paint until the gourd is ready. Our YouTube video demonstrating the process:
The following lesson is a preschool cut and paste lesson that uses gray tempera paint on a seal. If your children are capable of cutting the shapes themselves it will make it easier for them if you outline the shapes for them. In this lesson I used a cut up cupcake liner to create the collar and ball. Not only is this lesson great for a preschool circus theme but it is a good way to discuss shapes. As my students are two-years-old I pre-cut the shapes for them but allowed them to glue everything on in their own way. Materials: - Construction paper for the background in a bright color - Seal cut out or outline if the children are cutting it themselves - Trapezoid or rectangle shape for the seal's stage in construction paper - Gray tempera (or white and black if you would like to explain making gray and what a shade is) - Glue and scissors Preparation: If your class is young like mine and not able to cut for themselves, pre-cut the seal, stage, and cupcake liner and place into zip lock bags to keep them organized. You can either mix the gray yourself or do this in front of your children as a way to explain how gray is made. Our YouTube Video showing the process:
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!
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.
The following lesson is a printing lesson that uses koosh balls to print chicks for a spring lesson. You can find koosh balls at any dollar store in the children's section. This lesson is appropriate for children as young as two and uses tempera paint.
Vocabulary to Introduce:
printing tempera
Materials:
-paper plates
-yellow, blue, black, and orange tempera paint
-koosh ball
Preparation:
Water down blue tempera paint and mix well. You can place this on the table for the children to start with. Place yellow paint on plates with koosh balls in the center. You could place the orange and black on a plate by themselves off to the side until needed.
This video continues the series of fine motor activity videos we are starting. Fine motor activities are extremely important with preschool age children. Such important functions such as writing, cutting, and more require the coordination and a certain amount of strength in the small muscles of the hands and fingers. In addition, fine motor activities require intention and concentration. In particular, using lessons that require passing objects through a slot works on developing wrist movement as the child tries to orient it into the container as well as serving as a practice for hand eye coordination. In this video I used a three finger grip which was encouraged by the Montessori school I worked previously. This lesson can easily be adapted for other themes/seasons by changing the shape/type of the objects being used to put into the can. In addition instead of using a baby formula can, I have seen other educators use chip cans as well. I also laminated the shamrocks for added durability with my two year old class. Materials: -can -scissors -cut out objects (shamrocks)
One last winter lesson before we welcome spring in the next few weeks. This is a sorting lesson using plastic cups and plastic snowflakes that can easily be found in stores such as Dollar Tree, Walmart, or Michael's. The snowflakes can be switched out for other seasonal items you think of. Stickers or cut out items work just as well.
Sorting is an important activity that begins in the preschool years. Activities such as these can encourage young children to recognize things that are the same and different building the skills for classification.
This lesson can be appropriate for children as young as two. I am currently a two year old teacher and even my youngest students can accomplish this once I have worked with them for a couple weeks. If you wish to make the activity easier start with two different types of items to sort. Materials Needed: -plastic cups -seasonal items for sorting -hot glue or tape to place an example on the front or bottom of the cup Preparation: The only preparation for this lesson would be to either glue or tape an example of which item goes in each cup if you wish. Our YouTube Video demonstrating the process:
This is the first in a series of fine motor activity videos we are starting. Fine motor activities are extremely important with preschool age children. Such important functions such as writing, cutting, and more require the coordination and a certain amount of strength in the small muscles of the hands and fingers. In addition, fine motor activities require intention and concentration. The fine motor activities we will post can be modified to make them easier or harder depending on the age and skill of the child. While I currently teach a two year old class, the majority of my students, aside from those who have just turned two, can tweeze (although my class uses plastic, round-tipped tweezers and pom poms). This lesson is appropriate for children three and older. If you have questions about how you can change this lesson for your unique situation please comment or write us! In the following lesson, students will tweeze letters out of an ice tray as a fine motor activity. Fine motor activities often serve the dual purpose of developing strength and coordination while building concentration skills.
Materials:
ice tray (Valentine's heart ice tray was purchased at the dollar store)
tweezers
paper
red marker
laminator, contact paper, or tape (if you wish to protect the letters)
Preparation:
Cut rectangles that are small enough to fit into each shape of the ice tray and that leave room to maneuver the tweezers in. Draw a small "V" so that the rectangles resemble the back of a letter. When placing the lesson out, make sure each heart has a letter in it and place a container (small bowl or condiment cup) to collect the letters as they tweeze them out.
Our YouTube Video demonstrating the process:
For Younger Children:
You can make it easier for them by using pom poms and plastic tweezers (can be purchased at a discount school supply store). Here is an example of the easy grip type we use in my class with two to three year olds:
This is a winter potato printing lesson. I do currently teach a two to three year old class. My children completed this lesson with amazing results, although we limited it to one penguin. Some variations of this you could do depending on the level of difficulty your children may need would be to include a background (snow/water).
Vocabulary to Introduce:
printing acyrlic
Materials:
paper plates
school glue
potatoes
acrylic paint (black, white, and orange)
google eyes
Preparation:
Slice potatoes in half and pair them on plates making sure that one is smaller than the other to fit inside the body for a white belly. Put white and black paint on the plates, spreading them to correct size with the potato intended for each. Either place the orange on separate plates or save until the children begin to finish with their penguins.
