Education specialists at the University of Connecticut's Literacy Web recommend Lil' Fingers website for prekindergarten activities. At this site, you will find interactive storybooks designed for little folks. Set your child into your lap and read storybooks such as "Daddy Wears a Funny Hat," "My Mommy" or "Monsters in the Dark." Try on different types of occupational hats such as fireman, police or beach and act out stories as dramatic art. Draw and color family collaborative illustrations where everyone adds part of the picture. Base illustrations on storybooks you read either on-line or from your own collection.
For a spring-season art activity families can try at home, borrow an idea from Kinderart, another Literacy Web recommended site, by teacher Sandy Waters. Small flower gardens at home provide opportunities for preschool students to create beautiful scenes. Find small rounded rocks to turn into ladybugs, a friend to the garden. Wash and dry rocks. Paint them with red tempera paint. Paint on black tempera paint spots and eyes. Allow them to dry. Place them into your garden or flower bed to create a lovely scene. Add a sign that you make together.
Adapt this activity by painting bricks and writing "My Garden" on them. Add a painted flower. Make different kinds of rock bugs or small animals and place in garden.
Supplement with a bedtime story such as Eric Carle's "The Grouchy Ladybug" to reinforce the activities of the day and create more art inside the imagination.
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Even rushed moments in every day provide opportunities for participating in family art activities. Preschool children love helping out in the kitchen. Allow them to put butter or margarine "eyes," "noses" and "mouths" on bread slices before Mom slips them into the oven to toast.
String cereal loops onto colored yarn to make necklaces. Practice counting skills and color naming skills while stringing cereal. It's okay to munch and make, too.
Apples turn into artistic centerpieces when families make edible art kebobs. Add pineapple, apple, orange and melon pieces, along with a few grapes, to wooden skewers. Stick skewers into the tops of the apples in a fan-like shape to finish. Set the fruit centerpiece in the middle of the table.
Discussions about where fruit comes from, how to grow it, its place in stories and variations of colors provide excellent topics for practicing oral language skills.