Paper crafts develop young children's fine motor skills through the use of safety scissors, crayons and tape. Seasonal paper craft projects can be incorporated into more comprehensive units about weather or holidays. For example, assist students with tracing and cutting out Christmas tree or menorah shapes from paper for a winter project. Stickers, glitter glue and paint allow students to create personalized pieces of art for their homes. Collages are another way to incorporate paper craft projects into the preschool classroom. Begin with cutting and gluing different colors of construction paper onto poster board. As students develop their skills, challenge students to cut pictures from magazines or create themed collages.
Reading and writing skills of preschool students are vastly differentiated, so literacy-based projects allow students to develop skills at their own pace. Booklet projects involve helping students fold and staple pieces of paper into blank books. Students might make family-tree books in which they draw portraits and write the names of their family members. Another option might be to ask students to fill the pages with pictures and names of their favorite foods, toys or places to visit. Another option for a literacy project is to invite children to visit the classroom library and choose a book they'd like to hear. After hearing the story from a teacher or parent, or reading the story to themselves if they have developed reading skills, the students then tell summaries of the tales to their classmates during a story-sharing circle time.
Music projects promote interest in the arts as well as the development of gross-motor and sensory skills. During a unit on music or instruments, provide students with materials to create their own instruments and form a classroom band. A simple way to make a drum is to stretch a piece of rubber over a small can and secure it with a rubber band. Students might fill plastic containers with beans, rocks or rubber balls and secure the tops to make shakers. After students create their instruments, provide feathers, glue, adhesive rhinestones or paper scraps for decorating and lead a classroom music parade.
Preschool science projects introduce young students to basic science concepts in their surrounding natural world. Creating play dough introduces students to the concept of physical and chemical changes when mixing ingredients (see Resources). After students create their dough, encourage them to experiment with creating different shapes or models. Turn recess into a science project with a dinosaur bone hunt. Boiling chicken bones removes excess meat, and hiding the bones in the sandbox turns recess into a science-based excavation. Provide shovels, sand sifters and collection buckets for budding archaeologists to uncover their bounty.