Art Archives - UDA Preschool Blog

July 12, 2021

10 Transportation Activities Your Preschooler Can Do at Home

Preschoolers are fascinated by vehicles. And transportation activities for preschoolers can actually help teach important concepts, like letters, numbers, cooperation, planning, and more.

Whether your kiddo is obsessed with tractors, trains, or trucks, these 10 transportation activities for preschoolers will give you something to do on a lazy afternoon while boosting important preschool skills.

1. Chairs, Chairs, Chairs

Let your preschooler rearrange the kitchen chairs to create a world of pretend transportation. Line the chairs up in a row to create a train, add aisles for an airplane, or create a replica of the family car.

Grab a few props from around the house — a suitcase, dress-up clothes, backpack, books for the flight, cardboard IDs for check-in, and more. Your child will have a great time playing pretend, but they’ll also be building vocabulary, increasing planning skills, and strengthening their imagination.

{Read: Why Your Child Needs Pretend Play}

2. Workin’ at the Carwash

A carwash sensory bin is a great backyard activity for a hot day, or a perfect kitchen-sink activity when it’s too cold to play with water outside.

Fill up a tub with soapy water, give your child some cleaning items (washcloth, brush, toothbrush), and let them give their toy cars a carwash. This sensory activity helps their brain create stronger connections, develops motor skills, builds imagination, and more.

[Read: The Benefits of Multisensory Learning]

Another fun sensory bin transportation activity for preschoolers is to make a construction sensory bin with sand, gravel, and rocks.

3. Make a Steering Wheel

Use construction paper or cardboard to make your own steering wheels, and then let your child use the wheel in their play. Have them bring their steering wheel along on car rides so they can backseat drive!

4. Active Transportation Activities for Preschoolers

Get your preschooler moving by teaching them to use their body as transportation in their pretend play. They can “fly” around the room as airplanes by putting their arms out to their sides. Crawling on the floor, they can use an arm to scoop up toys as they pretend to be a tractor (this could be helpful during cleanup time too!).

5. Car Painting

Have your child express themselves creatively with the transportation theme by painting with toy cars. Using washable paint, let your child use plastic toy cars as paintbrushes on their canvas. This will build creativity, reinforce the concept of cause-and-effect, and build fine motor skills.

6. Pull Out the Sleds

You might have some fun transportation props sitting in your garage. For example, a sled can make a fun boat on your living room floor. Your preschooler can take the lead in pretending where that boat is headed — is it going on a fishing trip, heading across the ocean to another continent, or ferrying stuffed animals across a river?

Let your child’s imagination drive this activity.

7. A City on the Floor

You might already have a rug with roads, buildings, and stop signs. These are great tools for imaginative play. But if you don’t have one, build one with your child.

Use masking tape to create roads. If your child wants a more-involved city, you can build buildings out of cardboard, toilet paper rolls, and more.

8. Make a Parking Lot

Use a cardboard box to make a parking lot for your child’s toy cars.

This is a great way to practice numbers or letters. Label each parking spot with a number or letter, and then label each car with a corresponding number or letter. Ask your child to park each car in its coordinating parking spot.

You can increase the challenge by asking them to park their car in the spot that is “plus 1” or “minus 1” from their car’s number.

9. Make Vehicles out of Shapes

Cut out triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles (or have your child do it), and then use those shapes to create vehicles. The vehicles can look like real vehicles, or your child can make up their own.

10. Visit Big Vehicles

Take your preschooler to a construction site or fire station to let them observe big vehicles. What colors does your child see? How are the vehicles the same as your family car? How are they different? What sounds do the vehicles make? What features help the vehicles get their jobs done?

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Salt Lake City, thematic pretend play helps us teach reading, writing, science, social studies, and so much more. Learn about our curriculum. Call us at (801) 523-5930 for a tour.

November 14, 2020November 30, 2020

7 Thanksgiving Activities for Your Preschooler

Thanksgiving time lends naturally to discussions of gratitude, even among the youngest of us! At UDA Creative Arts Preschool, we help children understand the concept of gratitude while giving opportunities for practice.

You can do the same at home, with these seven Thanksgiving activities for preschoolers, all of which point back to gratitude in one way or another. Do these on the day of Thanksgiving, or any time during the month.

{How to Teach Gratitude to Your Preschooler}

Cook Together

Thanksgiving is such a high-stakes meal, which might lead to shooing the littlest children out of the kitchen. But does it really have to be that way? For a meal so focused on gratitude, this is a perfect time to involve your preschool-aged children.

Think of simple kitchen activities that your child can manage mostly on their own: washing green beans, stirring stuffing, spreading butter, and mixing the dip for appetizers.

Be sure to thank your child for their help, and point out how their contributions allowed others to enjoy the meal.

Make Homemade Butter

Kids love making butter in a jar. All you need is a baby food jar or mason jar, heavy cream, and a wiggly child willing to shake the jar! Follow these directions from The Stay-at-Home Chef here.

Make the butter a few days before Thanksgiving, and then ooh and ahh over how delicious it tastes on your Thanksgiving rolls. Your child will enjoy your gratitude for their hard work.

Go for a Walk — for Charity

Traditional community turkey trots and charity walks may not take place in 2020, but your family unit can still create your own charity walk.

Pick a charity you all want to support. Then, map out a route and set out on a walk or jog together as a family. Donate what you would have donated in a traditional turkey trot.

Go for a Walk — for Nature Art

Take a walk around the neighborhood, looking for nature items you can bring back home. As you walk, talk about what you’re grateful for in nature. Point out the tree your child loves to climb, or notice the beautiful variations in the neighbor’s rock bed.

Collect twigs, leaves, rocks, acorns, pinecones, and more. Bring them home and make a gratitude nature art piece. Use paper, glue, tape, glitter, scissors, markers, and crayons and see what your child can create.

{6 Playful Art Ideas for Your Preschooler}

Create a Thankful Collage

Put some concrete understanding behind the concept of gratitude. Discuss what it means to be thankful. Then, look through magazines for images that remind you of gratitude. Cut out the images and arrange them into a collage. Display the collage somewhere your family will pass by frequently, so everyone can be reminded of gratitude.

{4 Ways to Teach Gratitude and the Joy of Giving}

Let Your Child Make Place Cards

Give your child ownership of Thanksgiving day, by letting them help decorate. One simple — and fun — thing your child can do is to create place cards for the dinner table.

If your child can write, let them sound out people’s names. If this frustrates them, write out the names for your child to copy.

If your child can’t yet write, you can first write the names and let your child decorate the place cards. Or you can forego names, and let your child decorate however they want.

Stickers are a great item to have to make the place card decorating fun — and to help your child develop their pincer grasp.

Make Thankful Cards

Talk about people you love and why you’re thankful for them. Then, encourage your child to decorate cards and write those thoughts (with your help, if needed). Hand deliver the cards, or send them in the mail!

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Draper, Utah, we teach children important character traits, like gratitude, as part of our curriculum. To learn more about how and what we teach, contact us online or give us a call at (801) 523-5930.

November 11, 2020November 14, 2020

6 Playful Art Ideas for Your Preschooler

If you’ve been around UDA Creative Arts Preschool for a minute, you know our curriculum is heavily focused on play.

That’s because play is critical for children’s development. Play is how children learn, and it allows children to develop in multiple areas: physically, emotionally, and cognitively. Through play, children build their imagination, strengthen their dexterity, develop social skills, learn problem-solving, and so much more.

Not to mention, play is fun! And that’s important, because when a child is experiencing joy, they have a positive experience — and that leads to a positive association with learning.

There are generally four types of play: dramatic (pretend), manipulative (using toys and objects), physical, and creative.

In creative play, children use art materials to create — and the play happens in the process. The end product isn’t as important as the creation. In other words, the playful process is where the magic happens!

Try these six playful art ideas with your preschooler.

Nature Art

Begin this playful art project by going for a walk/run/hop around the neighborhood to collect nature items. Let your child’s imagination run wild — maybe they’re on the hunt for dinosaur fossils, or maybe they’re searching the area for food to bring back to their pretend cabin in the woods.

When you get home, use craft items like glue, glitter, paint, paper, and markers to create an art piece out of the items collected.

Soil Tray

This is a great outdoor activity, especially because it involves getting dirty! Place soil into some sort of tray, and then let your child arrange nature items however they’d like.

Similar to nature art, this playful art activity begins with a hunt in your backyard or neighborhood for nature items.

You’ll also want to gather:

a tray or plastic plate
soil
a spray bottle
small tools for arranging the dirt (toothbrush, toothpick, pencil, paintbrush)

Story Art

Children’s imaginations are huge. Foster their playful nature by encouraging them to tell you a story, while drawing it as they go.

Ice Cube Painting

Freeze a small toy into an ice cube. Give your child a piece of dark-colored construction paper, and encourage them to make art with the ice. As they “draw,” the ice will melt and free the toy!

Just Add Toys! And Other Things

Let your preschooler paint with toys, vegetables, toothbrushes, and more. This is such a fun activity for kids, because it lets them get even more playful with their art.

Not only that, they learn cause and effect — what happens when you paint with a toy car? How is it different from a paint brush or fingers?

Look around the house for other unique “paint brushes.” How about a toilet paper roll? Toy animals? Plastic utensils?

Spice up Your Playdough

Playdough is a great way to combine art with play. Children can turn the playdough into all sorts of fun, artistic creations. They can also use the items they create in their play. Maybe they’ll set up a playdough hamburger stand or pretend to take care of a playdough pet snake.

Make playdough even more of a sensory experience by making scented playdough. We love using pumpkin spice playdough during the fall. The scent inspires seasonal creations, and adds a lot of playful fun to creativity.

Here’s our favorite recipe!

Pumpkin Spice Play Dough

 1 cup of canned pumpkin puree
 1/2 cup of water
 2 tablespoons of oil
 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla
 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
 1 teaspoon of cloves
 1 teaspoon of allspice
 1 teaspoon of nutmeg
 1/2 teaspoon of ginger
 OR skip the separate spices and 4 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice
 1/2 cup of salt
 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
 2 ¼ Cups of flour

1. Add first four ingredients to a large pot and heat on the stove {stirring regularly} until just bubbling.

2. Remove from heat and add in dry ingredients. Stir until combined and dump mixture out on the counter.

3. Allow to cool for 5 or 10 minutes.

4. Knead dough until soft and fully cooled (it may feel sticky in the beginning but resist the urge to add flour – the stickiness vanishes completely once the dough is no longer warm). Store in an airtight bag or container in the fridge when not in use.

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Draper, Utah, we know how important art is for your child’s intellectual, physical, and emotional development. To learn more about how we teach, contact us online or give us a call at (801) 523-5930.

September 7, 2018

What Should Preschoolers Learn?

ABC. 123.

That’s what matters most in preschool, right? You want your child to be able to read, write, and do math so she’ll be ahead once she starts kindergarten.

Right?

Well, that’s only a small part of it.

While literacy and math are extremely important parts of your preschooler’s academic development, they don’t tell the whole story. Preschool is actually a critical time for your child to develop their whole self. A high-quality preschool will work on developing the whole child in the following ways:

How to Learn

We spend our whole lives learning, and preschool is where your child’s foundation begins. This is where your child develops their attitude towards school, where they determine if they are good learners or not, and where they learn if they have what it takes to figure out problems. Spoiler alert! Every child is a good learner and has what it takes to overcome challenges. The trick is to help your child keep their zest for learning.

A high-quality preschool knows how to keep learning active, engaging, fun, and age-appropriate. Play is a critical component of your child’s development and education, and preschool gives your child the chance to learn through play.

Character Development

What do we do when we want a turn? What do we do if we’re upset with someone? How do we divide and share resources? How do we solve a problem? How do we tell the truth? Take responsibility? Show compassion for others?

Preschool gives children plenty of opportunities to practice, make mistakes, fix mistakes, and get it right. It’s the perfect setting for children to really begin to build the foundation for a strong character.

Creative Arts

“Children engaged in creating art express their feelings constructively, not destructively,” says Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, consultant for childhood education, teacher, and organizer of San Francisco Classroom Teachers’ Association.

Children thrive when they can express themselves through art. Open-ended art materials and a supportive environment at preschool allows your child to explore their feelings in safe and healthy ways.

Plus, art helps children develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and increases creativity and imagination.

Language and Literacy

The ability to read and write allows children to communicate more clearly, and builds a confidence and thirst for knowledge. In preschool, your child gets to develop a love for reading and take charge of their own interests. Plus, children have opportunities all day to build their vocabulary and communication skills through talking, playing, listening, and interacting.

Math

Numbers. Shapes. Measurements. Patterns. Sorting. None of us are born hating math, but many of us develop a distaste for the subject. When a preschool integrates math throughout their teaching, it gives your child an early confidence, interest, and understanding in math.

Science and Engineering

Why? How?

These questions are always on your preschooler’s mind, and science and engineering answer them.

Science and engineering are everywhere, and at this time of life when your preschooler is fascinated by everything, it’s a great time for your child to learn how the world works by watching caterpillars emerge from chrysalises, see a seed grow into a pumpkin, use ramps to change the speed of cars, and so much more.

Social Studies

Preschoolers learn to appreciate people and their differences, to understand their place in the world, how to resolve conflicts, and more. Supportive teachers help children to see how to think of others and how to appreciate different traditions and ideas.

Physical Development

Creative movement opportunities let your child build their physical strength while also building memory, increasing concentration, and more. Coordination, large motor skills, rhythm, expression, emotion, and balance are all improved when a preschool includes physical development in its curriculum.

Music

The world is so much better because music is in it. And your child benefits in countless ways when music is a part of his preschool curriculum. Language skills, social skills, academic retention, listening skills, discipline, concentration, and so much more are developed through a music education. Plus, many preschools use music to teach concepts, like the days of the week, the life cycle of insects, and much more.

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Draper, Utah, we spend time in all of these areas each and every day. We know that preschool is a critical time to help your child develop her whole self, and we feel honored to be a part of that journey. If you’d like to learn more about what we do, give us a call at (801) 523-5930, or contact us online for a tour.

June 30, 2018

How to Take Your Preschooler to a Museum

Sure, you don’t have any reservations about taking your preschooler to a children’s museum. Those places are designed with kids in mind; every display screams “TOUCH ME! TOUCH ME WITH ALL OF YOUR BODY!”

But what about an art museum? Have you braved the quiet, still, cavernous rooms filled with priceless works of art, or are you telling yourself you’ll try an art museum visit when your kids are older?

You don’t need to wait until your child reaches a certain age or milestone to visit an art museum. In fact, your preschooler will get heaps of education and experience from the visual stimulation, interactions with you, and lessons in appropriate behavior in a museum right now.

Don’t put it off. Use these tips to make the experience at an art museum with your preschooler an enjoyable (and manner-filled) one for both of you.

Ahead of Time

A museum trip for anybody is made better by doing a little prep work, and when preschoolers are involved, the more you do ahead of time, the better your trip is likely to go.

Study up

Before you head to the museum, spend some time on its website so you can become familiar with the current exhibitions. This will help you know the highlights, and you’ll also see some pieces of art that might be of particular interest to your child.

Most importantly, you’ll know something about what you’re going to see. This will help you to point out interesting facts or images that relate to your child, keeping her engaged while at the museum.

Show Your Child

Show your child a little bit of what you’ve learned on the museum’s website. Print out a few images you know you’ll see and point out the shapes, colors, or other big ideas about the artwork. When your child sees the actual artwork in person, he’ll be thrilled he knows something about it.

Talk About Manners

The last thing you want is for your preschooler to run screaming through the museum, touching everything in her path. Have a brief conversation about museum manners. You can compare it to a library or church.

“When we go to the museum, we need to use our library voices and our quiet walking feet. This helps everyone to enjoy the art.”

At the Museum

So you’ve prepared. You know a thing or two about what you’re going to see, you’ve told your child about what to expect, and your child knows how to behave. How can you make sure all this works out to an enjoyable museum trip? You are attending the museum with an unpredictable preschooler, after all.

Play I Spy

Most children won’t give the paintings more than a cursory glance, unless someone shows them how to do it. Playing fun, interactive games with the paintings gets kids involved — and keeps them that way.

I Spy is a simple-enough way to get started. “I spy a yellow hat. I spy a gray animal.” Your child can point or quietly move to the painting once he spots the spied item. When he tells you what he spies, he’ll be examining the paintings even closer.

Copy the Poses

We can’t wait to try this great idea from My Kids’ Adventures. Have your child try to imitate a pose they see in a painting or sculpture. This not only helps kids wiggle in a place that is quite still, it keeps the kids looking at the paintings longer than they otherwise would. And they may notice quite a bit more than you expected.

Draw or Photograph the Art

If photography is allowed in the museum, your preschooler will be thrilled to take photos of her favorite pieces. You can even send her on a photo hunt, giving her specific items to look for in the paintings (an animal, a baby, something blue, something silly, someone sad, someone happy…)

If photography is not allowed, give your child a small sketchbook and a pencil. Ask him to sit on a bench in every other room and copy his favorite painting or sculpture.

Bring Something to Touch

You know your preschooler may have trouble with the strict no-touch rule in the museum. Why not bring something your child can touch? If you’re going to an exhibition of ballerina paintings, bring some ballet shoes to hold. If you’re going to an exhibition of landscapes, perhaps a fake flower would be soothing to hold.

Time It Right

Head to the museum before the meltdowns of nap time and the hangry pangs of lunchtime. If you can get to the museum early, you’ll likely encounter fewer people, your child will be well-rested, and nobody will be screaming for a snack (yet). Plan on two hours as your maximum.

Be Flexible

Don’t expect to see everything. A preschooler’s attention won’t last all day. If you have a favorite painting you want to see, go there first. Be willing to take breaks when needed. Bring snacks (but head to the cafeteria or outside to eat them). It’s okay if you only see one exhibition or one floor. You don’t want to tire out and bore your child. You want to see just enough to keep your child interested and involved.

Bring It Home

Keep talking about what you saw at the museum. If you were solo parenting at the museum, encourage your child to tell the other parent about her favorite painting, the silliest thing she saw, or the happiest or saddest thing she saw.

Do an art project that relates to something you saw.

Check out children’s books about museums from the library and look through them together.

Don’t be surprised if your preschooler remembers very little. It’s hard for him at this stage to articulate everything he experienced.

And don’t worry if your preschooler had a meltdown, didn’t love the museum, or tired out sooner than you thought she would. Not everyone is destined to love museums, but everyone can find something to enjoy. As you continue to keep art in your life, and continue to visit museums, your child’s enjoyment will grow.

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool, we know that art is a valuable tool for your child’s emotional well-being. It also refines visual perception and fine motor skills, increases creativity and imagination, and helps your child develop an appreciation of his surroundings. That’s why our students engage in art projects every single day, along with our seven other areas of focus. Call us for more information about our preschool program at (801) 523-5930.

August 12, 2017October 25, 2017

5 Art Activities for Your Preschooler’s Developing Mind

When was the last time you felt the cool ooze of paint between your fingers as it spread across the page? Or had the exhilaration of watching bright yellow and spring green twirl and twist at the gliding of your fingertips? But who has time to play in colorful finger-paints?

As fun as playing in finger-paints can be, its value extends beyond “fun,” especially in the preschooler’s developing mind. The benefits of art activities for preschoolers extend into all aspects of a child’s learning, and your participation as their parent or caregiver plays a role.

“It’s very encouraging for children to know that their parents are willing to participate in activities with them,” says Adrianne Russell, a Kansas City, Missouri-based arts consultant, “especially if it’s something the adults have never done before or have little experience with.”

“Painting, drawing or sculpting forces us to stop multitasking and focus on the project at hand, as well as the person we’re doing it with,” writes Grace Hwang Lynch, for PBS Parents.

One added benefit to art activities for preschoolers is that they keep those little munchkins busy! “Children engaged in creating art express their feelings constructively, not destructively,” says Sydney Gurewitz Clemens, consultant for childhood education, teacher and organizer of San Francisco Classroom Teachers’ Association.

With those long summer days, we can all use a few “constructive” ideas. Here are five fun art activities for preschoolers you can do at home for your munchkin’s developing mind.

1- Zebra Resist Finger-paint

A little messy, but definitely delicious. Let your child tear painter’s tape into strips and then press them down onto a paper plate. Make a small box of chocolate pudding and let it set. Scoop a spoonful of pudding onto the plate and let the cool yummy goodness glide beneath your fingers. Licking encouraged. When pudding has dried, peel the painter’s tape off.

Developmental Benefits: Small-motor skills are developed as tape is torn and placed on the plate. Language develops as your child discusses how the pudding feels, tastes, and looks as you discuss the outcome of the tape resist. Decision making is required as your child chooses how to tear the tape, where to place it, and how to move their hands to create thickness/thinness in the pudding.

2- Summer Collage

Have your child choose pictures that remind him of things he loves to do in the summer. Tear or cut them out of newspapers, magazines, pictures he draws, or even pictures you print for him. Allow him to organize them on a large paper (8×10 is fine) and then give him a quarter-size puddle of glue on a paper or in a milk lid. Let him paint the glue to his picture with a finger, paint brush or Q-tip, and then paste them to his large paper. Remember there is no right or wrong way for him to place his collage. Upside down and sideways pictures are part of the process.

Note on Scissors: Learning to cut is a challenging small-motor skill for young children. If he is tired of using scissors, encourage your child to tear his pictures out, but keep practicing with those scissors.

Developmental Benefits: Cutting, tearing, gluing and pasting are all small-motor skills that need coordination and muscle strength. Planning where to place pictures and then implementing the plan develops creative thinking, reasoning, and spatial awareness. Displaying the pictures they have chosen fosters self-worth and individuality.

3- Oobligook

Cornstarch and water make a wonderful medium for the small artistic hands. This art activity is all about the process. Gather 3 cups cornstarch and 2 cups water.

First let your child handle the dry cornstarch. What does it feel like?
Add a little water and let those little fingers mix. What is happening? What will happen if we add more water?
After the lumpy stage, add the rest of the water.
Mix it all up and enjoy the silly, flowing substance. Add food coloring if desired.
What can you create?

Developmental Benefits: Your little scientist is beginning the scientific method! Observing the qualities of her ingredients and making predictions, your preschooler is critically thinking. She is also tapping into that right brain as she handles and creates with the oobligook. The more we can cross the two brain hemispheres, the better! Language development is also occurring as she describes what she is feeling.

4- Beautiful Junk

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” This old English proverb holds true for preschool creativity! Give your child a pile of safe “junk” objects. (Cereal boxes, beads, foil, cartons, buttons, cloth, toilet paper/paper towel rolls, ribbon, spools, yarn, shoelaces, cotton balls, rubber bands, paper. etc.)

Then issue the challenge. “What can you make?” Or if they need a little guidance, “What is the tallest thing you can make?” “What is the shiniest thing you can make?” Be available with tape, or even better, colored duct tape, but let them do all the creating.

Developmental Benefits: This is a wonderful activity for problem solving. For more problem solving experience, have your child work with a friend to make their creation. This activity also encourages inventiveness.

“The kind of people society needs to make it move forward are thinking, inventive people who seek new ways and improvements, not people who can only follow directions,” says MaryAnn Kohl, an arts educator and author of numerous books about children’s art education. “Art is a way to encourage the process and the experience of thinking and making things better!”

5- Story Inspired Art

Book illustrations can be a wonderful way to inspire your home art. Here are a few examples:

Harold and the Purple Crayon, by Crockett Johnson. Use sidewalk chalk to draw your own adventure!

Press Here, by Hervé Tullet. So many dotty options! Dot pens, fingerprints, stamping. Try cutting grapes in half and stamping them in paint to tell your own dot story.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. Always a favorite! But have you ever examined the cover pages? With scraps of colored paper, make your own caterpillar holes using a hole punch. Then, use all the punch circles to decorate your little artist’s created butterfly.

Developmental Benefits: Language is developing any time we tell a story. Mathematical skills are developed as your child sequences her story. Your creativity is developed as you are inspired by the illustrations of others to come up with your own art adventure.

Remember: Process over Product!

As you do art activities with your preschooler, remember it’s about the process more than the product. The development happens as your child creates. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) offers some helpful suggestions for process-focused learning.

If you’d like to see more fun ways art can be used to develop your whole child, come visit us for a free tour at UDA Creative Arts Preschool, the premier preschool in Salt Lake. For more information, call us at (801)-523-5930.

Written by: Elsje Denison