A Wetu: A Preschool Thanksgiving 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:

Jack O'Lantern Play Dough Mat

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!

Our YouTube Tutorial and Example:

Gourd Ghosts!

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:

Seal for a Preschool Zoo Theme

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:

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:

Preschool Printing Lesson::Spring Chicks

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.


Our YouTube Video demonstrating the process: