I love doing crafts with my preschooler. Crafting is great for preschoolers and toddlers because while they're having fun, it also helps them with fine motor skills, creativity, and concrete learning.
Here are three of our favorite skill-building crafts for preschoolers! They use supplies you probably already have on hand; if not, get creative and use whatever you have available.
Basic materials needed:
- Construction paper or finger paint paper
- Finger paint in fall colors
- Pom-poms or other craft materials like tissue paper, pipe cleaners, etc.
- Stickers
- Googly eyes
- Glue stick or bottle of glue
Pumpkin Finger Painting
This is a super simple setup. Just draw a pumpkin or any other fall object or scene on paper. Don't worry... your child won't critique your artistic skills. Put a small amount of finger paint on a little plate and let your child dab their finger(s) in the paint and dot in the picture.
Skills they're learning: This craft activity helps your child develop and strengthen fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
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Pom-Pom Leaf Painting
Use brown construction paper and trace your child's hand and forearm. My daughter loves to see the outline of her hand! Cut it out and have your child use a glue stick to paste the cutout onto a piece of white construction paper.
Put a small amount of several fall leaf paint colors on a plate. Using small pom-poms as a tool, have your child dab the paint onto the tree to look like autumn leaves. My daughter used an orange pom-pom for the orange paint and a green pom-pom for the green paint.
My elementary-aged nieces made this craft, too, and added tissue paper and other materials they found to create a whole scene (pictured at the top of this article).
As a parent, this will be a tree you'll fall in love with since your child's hand is all over it!
Skills they're learning: This craft activity helps with color identification and matching, fine motor skills, and using fingers cooperatively. As you pick the colors, you can ask or tell your child what each one is. Using pom-poms for painting and a glue stick for pasting requires fingers to work cooperatively. Pasting and painting also reinforce fine motor skill development.
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Fall-themed Counting
Depending on your setup, this is more of a learning activity and less of a craft. We did this one two ways.
In one version, I drew pumpkins and put a number on each, and then my daughter put fall-themed stickers on each pumpkin to match the number.
In the second version, I drew candy corn figures and the numbers in each, and my daughter counted out how many googly eyes matched the number. Using glue drops or a glue stick, I had her paste the eyes on herself.
To turn this into a craft, have your child finger paint/finger dab instead of attaching stickers and googly eyes. If your child doesn't do all of these in one sitting, it's okay!
Skills they're learning: I love this activity as a tactile way of learning numbers and counting. I used this to reinforce numbers 1-5. Once she has mastered this, I will add more objects or use numbers 6-10.
Stickers are a powerful and simple way of helping your child develop fine motor skills. A lot of effort goes into peeling off stickers, and this activity is a fun way to learn numbers and counting.
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