Teach students about primary colors and that when two primary colors are combined, they make another color. Give each student a large white piece of paper. Students should choose two primary colors---red, yellow or blue---and put two drops of each color on the square paper. After folding the paper in half, students will notice that the two colors made a different color and the shape of a blot. For instance, red and yellow makes orange. Allow the papers to dry. Then students can cut out the shapes of the blots and use crayons and markers to decorate their cutout blots to make them look like bugs.
If you have old, broken crayons laying around, you can recycle them and create larger crayons and teach students about mixing colors, too. Peel the paper off the crayons. Place the crayons in a muffin tin. Students can either put like colors together or they can combine two colors. Place the muffin tins in a preheated oven at 250 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until the crayons are melted. After the crayons cool, take them out of the tins. Students can examine their new colors and use the colorful, round disks for coloring.
Place 1/2 cup of shaving cream in a bowl and add about 1 teaspoon of washable liquid paint. Mix the shaving cream and the paint. Have children use paintbrushes to paint on paper. Encourage the preschoolers to keep the paintbrushes with their corresponding colors. When the paint dries, students will have a textured, colored picture.
Teach students how food coloring works with a sand art activity. Fill a sandwich bag with sand for each student . Allow students to choose a food color. Add a few drops of the food coloring to the bag. Students can shake the sand until the color is evenly distributed. Then, on a piece of white construction paper, encourage students to draw a picture with a marker or pencil. They should outline the picture in glue. Before the glue dries, they can shake their colored sand onto the paper and shake off excess sand.