🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🎨 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.
- 🏆 Pride & Accomplishment — Completing a craft and displaying or giving it away gives children a concrete experience of accomplishment — building the relationship between effort, completion, and pride that motivates future creative risk-taking.
- ♻️ Environmental Thinking — Using natural or recycled materials in crafts begins to develop awareness that materials have a life beyond their original use — an early foundation for environmental stewardship and sustainable thinking.
- 👁️ Hand-Eye Coordination — Guiding scissors along a line, placing stickers exactly, and painting within a space all require the visual-motor integration that handwriting, sports, and detailed work depend on.
Princess Katie, from
Songs for the Coolest Kids, may wear gowns and a tiara during the day, but her favorite thing to wear when she gets home is her jeans! Our clothes express who we are, so let your preschooler express his/her sense of self by designing a pair of jeans that represent who they are and what they like. Read the review of
Songs for the Coolest Kids CD.
Materials you will Need
Butcher paper, enough to trace around your child’s lower body
A pencil
Crayons
Markers
Magazines to cut up
Scissors
Glue
How to Make It
Step 1:
Spread the butcher paper on the floor. Have your preschooler lie down on the paper then draw a pair of jeans around his/her waist and legs. When s/he stands up, complete the broken lines.
Step 2:
Using the crayons or markers, color the jeans.
Step 3:
Talk to your preschooler about him/herself. What does s/he like to do? What are his/her favorite things? What is his/her family like. Explain that s/he is going to decorate the jeans to express things about himself and make a list of those things s/he comes up with.
Step 4:
Look through the magazines for pictures that represent the items on the list. For example, if s/he likes cats, you might find a picture of a cat together. Cut out and set aside the pictures.
Sept 5:
Let your preschooler glue on the pictures as suits him/her. S/he can also draw or even just scribble a favorite color.
Make it More Challenging
Challenge 1:
Let your preschooler add other objects such as scraps, yarn, wrappers from a favorite snack, etc. Anything that s/he feels expresses him/herself.
Challenge 2:
Instead of a pair of jeans expressing him/herself, ask what kind of jeans a princess might wear. Would a princess have jeans with jewels or trimmed in gold? Let your preschooler imagine and create a pair of super fancy princess jeans with jewels, metallic fabric paint, and sequins.
Helpful Tips for Parents
Tip 1:
You can play the Jeans! song from the Songs for the Coolest Kids CD and sing along as you and your preschooler work. The lyrics are included in the CD packaging.
Tip 2:
This craft is about self expression. If your preschool just wants to scribble on them with the crayons, it’s fine.
Tip 3:
It’s good to put all the pictures into a big zipper food storage bag as you cut them out to keep them from getting lost before you’re ready for them.
More Great Princess Katie and Racer Steve Activities
Start A Royal Rock Band
Come up with a fun and fantastic name for your new preschool rockers. Let them bang and boogie. While you dance and wiggle, and even take some fantastic fan pictures.
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!
The five most important preschool craft skills, in developmental order: 1) Tearing and manipulating paper (develops hand strength and bilateral coordination), 2) Scissor use (bilateral coordination and precision), 3) Gluing (spatial planning and fine motor), 4) Drawing and painting with intention (fine motor and visual-motor integration), 5) Three-dimensional construction (spatial reasoning). These skills directly support handwriting readiness and support every other craft skill the child will develop.
