🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🌿 Sensory Exploration — Handling varied craft materials — soft fabric, rough sandpaper, smooth clay, scratchy burlap — builds sensory discrimination and supports the processing skills that some children need additional practice with.
- 🧠 Pre-Writing Skills — Drawing, tracing, and mark-making with a variety of tools develops the grip strength, pencil control, and visual-motor precision that handwriting requires — making craft time genuine writing preparation.
- 🖐️ Fine Motor Skills — Cutting, gluing, folding, and manipulating craft materials directly exercises the small hand muscles and finger precision required for handwriting and other fine-detail tasks.
- 🎨 Creativity & Self-Expression — Making freely chosen creative decisions — which colors, shapes, and materials to use — develops a child's personal artistic voice and the confidence to express original ideas across all areas of life.
In the CD,
Songs for the Coolest Kids, Princess Katie sings a song called
Tell Them How You Feel, which is a song about verbalizing emotions. Since preschoolers often don’t know the words the need to say to tell you have they feel,
Preschool Feelings Masks can give your preschooler both the vocabulary s/he needs and a means for expressing feelings without words. Preschoolers who can express their emotions in words have a better sense that their feelings are being understood and feel less frustrated. Besides being a lesson in self-expression, making and playing with masks is great fun.
Materials You Will Need
Crayons or Markers
Large craft sticks
How to Make It
Step 1:
Using the How are you Feeling Today? poster or a similar picture, discuss with your preschooler how people’s faces show what they are feeling. Talk about different emotions. Help your preschooler identify various emotions s/he might have by asking questions such as “How do you feel when someone takes something away from you?” Help your preschooler identify this emotion as anger. Ask similar questions about other emotions such as happy, sad, etc. For each feeling, find the matching face on the How are you Feeling Today poster so s/he has an idea of what that emotion might look like in a drawing.
Step 2:
When you have discussed the emotions, have your preschooler look in the mirror and express those emotions with his/her own face.
Step 3:
Have your preschool draw what s/he sees on the front of a paper plate with crayons or markers.
Step 4:
Cut out eye holes and mouth holes.
Step 5:
Parent step; since your preschooler may draw an emotion you can’t easily identify, be sure to write the emotion on the edge of the plate below the face; that way if s/he needs to use the masks to express him/herself, you will know what it means.
Step 6:
Glue the craft sticks on the back of the paper plates for handles. Let dry completely.
Step 7:
Review with your preschooler what each mask means to him/her.
Helpful Tips for Parents
Tip 1:
Use the masks to act out to the song Tell Them How You Feel.
Tip 2:
For the first week or so, review daily which emotion each mask represents. It’s okay if your preschooler wants to change it.
Tip 3:
After the first week, review the meaning of the masks from time to time.
Tip 4:
Encourage your preschooler to use the masks to express feelings to you when s/he feels s/he cannot do so in words. When s/he does, use words and facial expressions to identify emotions for him/her. In time s/he will find was to articulate feelings without the masks.
More Princess Katie and Racer Steve Fun
Songs for the Coolest Kids CD Review
Learn more about this fun and character-building CD for children preschool age and up.
My name is
Shannon McMath and I am the Crafts writer at PreschoolRock.com. I live in California with my husband, Steve, and my daughter, Emily. Crafting is a passion of mine and I love to pass on the joy to preschoolers. Sharing quality time with your preschooler creating crafts will not only help him/her develop fine motor skills and creativity, it will create memories that will last a life time! If you have any ideas, suggestions or comments feel free to
contact me. Thanks!
Spring-loaded or squeeze scissors can be introduced from age 2 for supervised snipping. Proper child safety scissors for basic cutting are typically introduced between ages 3–4. By age 5, most children can cut straight lines and simple curves independently. Fine motor development varies significantly — children with stronger hand development may be ready earlier; children with lower muscle tone may need more time and targeted practice. Supervised cutting practice 3 times per week develops the skill rapidly.
