Process art is such an important part of our preschool curriculum! When children are painting, cutting, collaging, molding, and drawing their brains are getting smarter and smarter. For many people (parents?!) process art is just not quite cute enough to be fridge-worthy. I get it, really I do. (I’m a mom, too, remember! I don’t need a mountain of 100 fingerpainted papers on my counter.) Fortunately we have the perfect solution: an easy and cute way to turn a great process art project into a gallery piece. Make these winter name art projects!
Isn’t it great when 1 project meets a bunch of objectives?! Look at all of the learning that’s occurring here.
Objectives:
- Cooperation — Kids share paint, brushes and paper!
- Color Theory — We put out blue, white and purple paint. They were excited to see all of the different shades of color.
- Process Art — Foam brushes offer kids the option to stamp, brush, or roll the paint.
- Gross Motor — Cover a table with paper and let the kids stand, walk and move while they create.
Some of our students need encouragement to participate in art projects. Not this one! They all wanted in on the action.
This is what the art area looked like when they were finished! It was a beautiful winter scene. We could have hung it up on display or cut small pieces for each child to take home.
Instead, we turned the winter process paintings into some gorgeous Winter Name Art. Names are so important to our preschoolers and we love to sneak in name learning any chance we can!
I cut 12×12 squares of the dried winter painting to run through my Silhouette Cameo cutter. You could also cut out the letters by hand, but the Cameo makes each letter perfect.
The next day the students found their letters and glued them onto a piece of 12×12 cardstock.
We let them use Sharpie markers (They love this!) to write their names on the large paper. These make such a nice keepsake for the parents to remember what their child’s handwriting looked like in preschool.
Our kids were beaming with pride when they carried their Winter Name Art home. We were beaming with pride at how far they have progressed in terms of writing their names since the beginning of the school year. Amazing!!!
