Summer Preschool Crafts: A Few Clever Ideas to Keep Kids Crafting During the Summer

Summer Preschool Crafts: A Few Clever Ideas to Keep Kids Crafting During the Summer
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Now that the warm weather is here add some summer fun to your preschool curriculum. These crafts will delight your preschoolers and keep them busy too!

Watermelon Craft

This watermelon craft is a perfect follow up to reading a book like The Enormous Watermelon.

Materials

  • The Enormous Watermelon by Brenda Parkes and Judith Smith or another book about a watermelon
  • Large piece of white paper shaped like a slice of watermelon, one per child
  • Green and red water colors or other paints
  • Paintbrushes
  • Watermelon seeds or sunflower seeds
  • Craft glue
  • Watermelon flavored powdered gelatin

Procedure

  1. After reading and discussing a book about watermelons, tell the children that they are going to be making their own watermelon slices.
  2. Give each child a watermelon shaped piece of paper.
  3. Show them how to paint the outside, curved-edge green and the inside red.
  4. When the paint has dried, have them paint over their watermelons with a thin layer of craft glue. Then they can sprinkle some of the watermelon flavored powdered gelatin over the glue and glue some seeds to the red part of their watermelons.
  5. After the glue has dried, they will have watermelon scented slices to display. These watermelons would make a cute summer bulletin board display.

Sun Pictures

Use the Sun to create a fun summer craft for preschool children.

Materials

  • A sunny day
  • Black or other dark colored construction paper
  • Small objects like leaves and shells, several for each child

Procedure

  1. On a day that is bright and sunny but not windy, give each child a piece of dark colored paper.
  2. Take the paper outside in the Sun and have them arrange some small objects on the paper. You can provide objects like shells and buttons or take the class on a walk around the school and let them collect their own objects for the craft.
  3. Leave the papers in the Sun for several hours and then have the kids take the objects off the papers.

They will find that the places where the paper stayed uncovered have faded and the places where the objects were stayed dark creating a neat picture made by the Sun. This would also be a good time to talk about how strong the Sun is (because it can fade the color of the paper) and why it is important to wear sunscreen when you are in the Sun. Try these other preschool sun art activities to go with your summer theme too!

Other Summer Craft Ideas

Here are a few more easy ideas for warm weather art activities.

  • Purchase plastic or foam sun visors and let your preschoolers decorate them with stickers, foam shapes and markers. This is perfect activity to go along with an outside activity like a splash day or picnic lunch.
  • The beach is a favorite summer destination. Try some of these beach crafts with your preschoolers when you talking about beaches of summer vacations.
  • Let the children draw or paint pictures of themselves participating in their favorite summer activities. Then use the pictures to make a bulletin board titled, “What We Love About Summer.”

These summer preschool crafts will make a great addition to your summer theme.

References

  • Book Cover Photo from Amazon.com
  • Parkes, Brenda and Smith, Judith. The Enormous Watermelon. Kingscourt Mcgraw Hill, 2001

This post is part of the series: A Summer Theme for Preschool Children

Find crafts, activities, books and more for a preschool unit about summer.

  1. Summer Theme Ideas for Your Preschool Class
  2. Summer Theme Preschool Bulletin Board Ideas
  3. Slicing Up Summer with Fun Activities Using Watermelon
  4. Sizzling Summer Crafts for Preschool Children
  5. Preschool Summer Clothes Activities