Does your child LOVE making arts and crafts?
Do they struggle with following directions for making cute crafts that look amazing, so you end up having to do most of the work for them?
That’s why process art is actually a better approach to making arts and crafts with young children. It’s a more open-ended process that works for children as young as toddler-aged. You provide age-appropriate materials, set them up for your child in an aesthetically pleasing way, and encourage your child to pursue their creative ideas using a variety of different materials.
For the young children I teach, I usually focus on a theme. Seasonal themes are great because your child may already be excited about the season, what’s going on outside (the leaves are changing color!), and all of the fun activities you may be doing as a family. There are so many possibilities!
When we think of process art as more than just art, but also the door to a whole world of learning opportunities that will get our kids excited about learning, we’ve unlocked the huge potential our kids have for becoming life-long learners.
To get you started, I’ve listed some ideas below. I’ll include picture examples from my own experience as well as ideas for extended learning opportunities.
Leaf Art Collage (Perfect for the Fall!)
Go on a nature walk with your child and collect various leaves, sticks, pinecones, and acorns. Come back home, and see what your child can make with the nature items you collected. A person? An animal? A tree? A pumpkin? You can also provide washable paint and use the leaves as stamps. For this project, I used heavy painting paper, regular liquid Elmer's glue, and washable tempera paint. The leaves and sticks were from my yard!
We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt, by Steve Metzger and Miki Sakamoto, is a great book to read with your child to go along with the art activity.
Winter Snow Process Art
Another extremely fun winter-themed art project to do with your child is winter snow! For this project, you’ll need dark blue construction paper and materials that look like snow. You could use white paint, a white crayon, or white glitter/glitter glue. Also having your child tear or cut pieces of white paper is an easy and fun way to get them using their fingers for fine motor development. Gluing on cotton balls or small white beads or buttons is another possibility. This project is amazing if you can use multiple kinds of materials. You can even ask your child what they think would look like snow. Once you’ve got your materials ready, your child can glue them onto the construction paper to make a beautiful snow scene. Another idea for this project is to add a cute cotton ball snowman with yarn for a scarf and beads for buttons.
One Snowy Day by Diana Murray and Diana Toledano is a great book to read with your child. This book has gorgeous illustrations, easy-to-read text, and also gives opportunities to practice counting.
Butterfly Handprint Art
This art project is perfect for the spring! Your child can make sideways handprints using washable paint on a piece of painting paper to form a butterfly shape. Another idea is for them to draw around their hands with a marker on construction paper and cut out the handprints. Then they can glue a popsicle stick in the middle of the handprint “wings.” Add a line of pom poms to the popsicle stick, wiggly eyes, and little pipecleaner antennas. Then let your child decorate the butterfly wings however they’d like. They could use gems, stickers, beads, and/or small items from nature to decorate their butterfly. This art project may need more preparation and help from a parent, but it’s so much fun to make and still provides open-ended art possibilities.
A great book to go along with this art project is Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser.
I really hope you (and your child) can benefit from these ideas. Maybe you’ll come up with even more!
Let me know in the comments if you have any other ideas that you and your child come up with.
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