Little kids love getting crafty, but their fine motor skills are often not developed enough to manage traditional arts and crafts supplies. By simplifying the tools toddlers and preschoolers use to create their masterpieces, you can ensure a positive art experience with wonderful results. And you can’t get much simpler than the hand- and fingerprint art project ideas below!

Fun with flamingos

Flamingos are a childhood favorite, perhaps because of their comical leg length and bright pink coloring. With some detailing assistance from you, your child can craft his or her own handprint flamingo! Place your child’s hand in a plate or pie tin of pink paint, then press onto your paper at a slight angle, palm to the bottom edge of your sheet. Flip the page and have your little one finger paint yellow legs and blue water. Add a beak and you’ve got a flamingo-scape art project!

Pretty peacock

Speaking of birds, your child’s handprint can also make a pretty peacock! Just press a hand dipped or painted in blue paint flat onto the center of your paper, then use markers to add legs, curly head feathers, a beak, and other colorful details. You may even want to get out the glue and let your child add real feathers, pipe cleaners, sequins, beads, and more to complete this magnificent art project.

Feeling crabby

Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Turn that frown upside-down! Printing two hands, wrist to wrist, in red paint creates the body of a crab. Once dry, have your child dip a finger in white paint and press to the center of the thumbprints, then add a dot of black marker to create the eyes. Add red pincher claws and it’s done!

Beautiful butterfly

Brighten Grandma’s day with a beautiful butterfly handprint piece! You’ll need to paint the body first – a simple tube with a round head and antennae on top. Then, using a different color for each print, have your child print two handprints on each side, wrists to the butterfly’s body, to create the wings.

Crafty caterpillar

First, paint your child’s palm green and fingers blue (don’t paint the thumb). Next, press three prints in a row, green palms side-by-side, in the center of your page. Flip the paper so the fingers point down and you’ve got your body’s critter. Rinse your little one’s hands and paint the palm only in red. Press the red palm above a green palm on either end to add the head. Finger paint two antennae and thumbprint two white eyes to create your very own version of that junk-food junkie!

Thumbprint dandelion

Create a colorful garden in your kitchen with this multi-colored thumbprint project! You’ll need to draw the stem, center, and extending lines with a marker. Then have your child dip his or her thumb in one color and print at the end of several of the lines you drew. Wipe and dip in another color and repeat until all lines are capped with thumbprints.

Grab some paper and tempera paints and try one of these creative craft ideas today – and be sure to email some pix to us at blog@learningresources.com

Learning is Where We Play:

Name That Letter (Grades K-1)

• Arrange a variety of tactile letters, such as foam, sandpaper, and magnetic letters, on a table. The student will record his or her name and responses with Easi-Speak.
• Ask the student to point to a letter, trace it with his or her finger, and say the letter's name. Then have the student practice making sounds, or phonemes, for letters. For example, tell the student to trace the letter s with his or her finger as he or she makes the /s/ sound.
• Finally, ask the student to name words that begin with the letter's phoneme and use the words in sentences.

Count Many Ways (Grades K-1)

• Give Easi-Speak to a small group of students. Have them take turns counting up from 1 to 30 and back from 30 to 1 while recording. Make sure each child records his or her name before starting to count.
• Have each student count from 1 to 100, or as high as they can. Use the recording as documentation and assessment for a student's portfolio.
• As the year goes on, challenge students to count by 2s, 5s and 10s.

Mini Meteorologists (Grades 1-2)

• Use your school's outdoor thermometer, or mount your own outside your classroom. As part of your morning routine, have a student act as the Weather Reporter, and say into the recorder, “Today is [day and date]. The temperature is ____.”
• Then go around the room and have students make additional observations, such as it's windy today, or it’s cloudy, or it snowed. Encourage them to expand on their observations and say things like, “We could go sledding.”
• At the end of each week, play back the recordings and have students create a bar graph to organize the data they collected on temperatures.

Punctuation and Inflections (Grades 1-3)

• Provide each student with a grade-level book that contains dialogue and a variety of sentence types.
• Have the student identify and mark two or more examples of a question, an exclamation, and a statement and tell you what types of punctuation are used in each sentence. Then have the student read and record these sentences.
• Have the student listen to his or her recording and point out the punctuation that affects his or her phrasing, tone, and expression. The student self-assesses the reading and repeats the activity.

Reporting on Favorites (Grades 2-3)

• Have students work in pairs to collect data from classmates. Suggest questions they can use, such as “What is your favorite ice cream: vanilla, chocolate, or other?”
• Include three categories for data collection. Each pair then interviews and records 5 other students using the Easi-Speak. After the data is collected, have each pair listen to the recording and tally the results on a sheet of paper divided into 3 columns.
• Students can then create a bar graph with the data. In time, you can ask each pair to brainstorm their own questions, and make predictions on the expected poll results.