Art activities for preschool children often require the teacher to do some preparation such as drawing and cutting objects for the children to decorate and put together. This cat project requires the teacher to use art foam board to cut cat faces that have missing eyes, nose, mouth and ears. The missing parts are cut out of art foam board and placed in a plastic container for each child. To begin the activity, show the children a cat face that has the eyes, nose, mouth and ears glued to a cat head which has been glued to a craft stick. Help the children glue the cat parts to the cat head and then glue this to a craft stick.
Learning the sound the letter "C" makes is a developmental milestone for young children. Using a cat as the prompt for this learning makes sense as young children love cats and kittens. The gist of this art project is to give children an 8 x 10 inch sheet of paper with the outline of a cat on it. Let the children decorate the cat in any way they like using markers, colors, tearing and gluing paper etc. When the cats are decorated, show the children some stickers of animals, flowers, toys or other things that start with the letter "C" sound. Be sure and have some stickers that do not start with the "C" sound. Ask each child if the sticker begins with the "C" sound. If he says yes, and it does, he gets to add it to his cat.
Preschool children, who are 4 to 5 years of age, typically understand rhyming words and enjoy playing rhyming games. An effective way to use a cat art activity to support learning about rhyming is to make cat rhyming chains to hang around the room. To make the chains, let the children have five strips of construction paper cut four inches long by one inch wide. Ask them to draw and decorate a cat on each strip. When this is completed, ask the children to think of words that rhyme with cat. Give each child more strips of paper to draw rhyming words. When all the strips have been decorated, have the children make a loop out of a strip and tape or staple it together. Thread another strip through the first loop and staple it. Do this until all of the strips have been linked together to form a chain.