This project will have your preschoolers using nature to create art, and is appropriate for a nature or spring theme Take students on a nature walk and have them collect leaves and flowers along the way. When you get back to the classroom, give the children paper on which to draw stick figures. Give them glue, and show them how to use the items they collected to make clothes, shoes, hair and accessories for their stick figures.
Cut potatoes in thirds and give each child a piece of potato. Go around to each child and draw a design of their choosing on the flesh part of the potato with a pencil. The children can the use the pencil to carve the design following the pattern that you drew. For each child's potato, take a knife and carve around the shape they designed so that it is sticking out. Next give the children trays of paint with a variety of colors. Have the children press their potatoes into the paint and then stamp them onto construction paper. Encourage the students to experiment with different colors and trade potato stamps with their friends to add variety to their picture.
This project works well as a welcome to preschool project during the first week of school. Have the children creating collages of their favorite things to use as their place mat for lunch or snacks. Provide the children with old magazines, safety scissors and glue. Encourage children to cut out pictures of their favorite colors, foods and toys. When the children are finished, laminate the mats and place them on the children's desks. Have the children show their placemats to their peers and talk about their favorite things.
Lay newspaper down on the table you will be using, as this project gets messy. Lay out several pie tins and add one cup of bubble solution to each. Then add 1/2 cup of tempera paint in different colors in each tin and mix well. Give each child white construction paper and a drinking straw. Pierce a hole in each straw with a pin in the middle so that the kids won't accidentally swallow the solution. Have the children place their straws one at time in the bubble solution, and blow until a mound of bubbles nearly overflows the tin. Then have the child immediately place their paper over the mound of bubbles, gently pressing down so that the bubble paint goes on the paper. Have the children take turns blowing bubbles and adding different paint colors to their paper until it is fully covered. Lay the prints on a table to dry.