🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• ⚡ Executive Function — Planning, sequencing steps, holding rules in mind while acting, and stopping a prepotent response all build executive function — the cluster of cognitive skills most strongly predictive of long-term academic and life success.
• 🤔 Critical Thinking — Being asked "why do you think that?" and forming and defending an answer develops the analytical reasoning children need for reading comprehension, mathematics, and evidence-based argumentation.
• ✏️ Pre-Writing Development — Drawing, tracing, and early mark-making develop the fine motor control and visual-motor integration that handwriting requires — making every drawing activity a contribution to writing readiness.
• 📖 Story Structure Understanding — Understanding that stories have a beginning, problem, solution, and ending develops narrative comprehension — the mental schema children use to make sense of increasingly complex texts throughout their school years.

Creating art projects and crafts is one of the things that make being a preschooler so magical. Some of the best memories of childhood are from time spent with a parent or teacher making art from every day objects and painting the things that make up our world. You do not need any special skills to make arts and crafts memorable for a preschooler. All you need to do is provide the materials and a little bit of inspiration and your preschooler will do the rest. These arts and crafts articles and activities will give you ideas for adding open-ended art to your preschool curriculum.

Featured Preschool Arts and Crafts Articles

Make a Preschool Art Box
Free art time helps preschoolers to explore their creative side and can be very relaxing for over stimulated preschoolers, but giving preschoolers free access to art supplies can create a huge mess. Simplify free art time by providing each preschooler with their own art box that contains only the art supplies that they have a proven mastery of.

5 Tips for Arts and Crafts in the Preschool Classroom
These 5 simple tips for art in the preschool classroom can make arts and crafts time much more enjoyable for preschoolers, preschool teachers, and preschool parents. Spend more time enjoying the process and less time stressing about the mess that preschool art projects can create.

Make a Preschool Craft Rack
Finding a place to store all of the small craft supplies that preschoolers use every day can be a huge chore for preschool teachers and parents. Recycle an old spice rack to create this easy to use preschool craft storage system.

Featured Arts and Crafts Activities

Preschool Autumn Hand Tree
Preschoolers are fascinated by the changing colors of fall leaves. This simple preschool art activity will let preschoolers create their own autumn tree. Preschoolers will strengthen their small motor skills as they trace their hand and practice using safety scissors.

Preschool Art Activity - Salt Dough Handprint
Preschoolers love to create unique pieces of art that they can share with their families. This salt dough handprint allows preschoolers to participate in the process from beginning to end.

Preschool Art Activity - All About Me Book
One of the most important jobs that preschoolers have is learning about themselves and the person that they want to become. These open-ended art activities come together to form an “All About Me” book that preschoolers will love to share with their parents.

More Preschool Arts and Crafts Activities

Preschool Cloud Puppets

Rock Through the Alphabet - Letter "A" Apple Stamping

Rock Through the Alphabet - Letter "B" Mask

Rock Through the Alphabet - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Palm Trees

Preschool Emotions Poster

Preschool Art - Paper Plate Fish

ASL I-Love-You Craft

Featured Preschool Art Techniques

Marble Painting

Spray Bottle Splatter Painting

Chopstick Painting

Around PreschoolRock.com

15 Tips to Make Preschool Craft Time Fun
Here are some tips on how to make craft time fun and easy for the entire family, including ways you can prevent excessive messes, have quicker clean-ups, and avoid conflicts. Craft time is more entertaining when you take measures to simplify the work beforehand.

Preschool Alphabet Soup Craft
Mmmm! Alphabet soup! This preschool construction paper craft uses letters of the alphabet to create imaginary alphabet soup on a real paper stovetop. Get cookin’ with your preschooler as s/he searches newspaper and magazine ads for letters of the alphabet – the main ingredient in this educational preschool craft.