This is a super fun craft that engages preschoolers’ motor skills, letter recognition, creativity and gives them something they can proudly show off. My daughter and her friend had a blast making their collages!
And I especially loved how this was such an easy craft to clean up!
Here are the tools you will need for this craft:
1. Large sheet of paper (I used 11×14 sheet of scrapbook paper)
2. Water colors
3. Magazines
4. child friendly scissors
5. Markers/crayons/colored pencils
To do the craft:
First, choose the letter you will be featuring in the collage. My daughter’s name is Lizzie, so she chose the letter L. Write the letter at the top of the page in both uppercase and lowercase. Then, flip through your magazines with your child. Let your child pick out pictures that have the featured letter in them.
Then, depending on the maturity of your child, let him/her cut out the picture and glue it wherever they want onto the paper. After the picture is attached, write the word above it, sounding out each letter.
Tell your child to circle the featured letter in the word you just wrote.
Repeat these steps for every picture you find!
You can also allow your child to practice writing their letter with the paint brush and paints.
Hint: I discovered how much faster this would have gone if only I had pre-cut pictures out of the magazines before we started. Lizzie is 5 years old and really enjoys cutting, but her friend is 3 years old and it took a lot of patience to teach her how to cut.
As you can see in the photo above, we didn’t find very many photos that had the letter “L.” I was trying to do this craft with my 5 year old and her 3 year old friend. Pre-cutting would really have helped speed things along. But my daughter really loved the painting and the 3 year old had a blast using the scissors and gluing. You can make this as crazy or as controlled as you like! It is such a wonderfully flexible activity!
