PAINT AND COLLAGE

Different ways to get creative with paint.  Plus: Give your child a "theme" and watch their collage take off!

http://www.freekidcrafts.com/kid-painting-ideas2.html
Crayon resist painting- Use a white crayon to draw anything you want on a white piece of paper. Then paint over the crayon using thinned paint or watercolors. You can use different color crayons on different colors of paper to make a different effect.

Puffy Paint Picture - Mix equal parts of flour, salt, and water to make puffy paint, and then color it any color you want with food coloring. Fill squeeze bottles with the paint mixture and then use them to create designs on thin pieces of cardboard (like the backs of cereal boxes). Let the pictures dry completely. When they dry the paint will be puffed up and it will sparkle.

Straw Painting - Put a couple of drops of thinned paint onto paper and give child straw to blow different patterns


http://www.buzzle.com/articles/watercolor-art-projects-for-kids.html
Salted Watercolor Paintings: On an art paper sheet, draw the outline of the image that you want to paint. Paint in the areas that you would want the attention to be on. Ensure that you paint these areas in bright colors. Now sprinkle regular salt on this painted section and let it dry. The salt creates a beautiful pattern and gives the painting a speckled texture. Once the painting is dry, you can brush off the salt and paint the other areas carefully.

Letter Collage

http://www.earthskids.com/projects_for_preschoolers/projects-preschoolers-collage.htm

There are many ways to do this craft, depending on what skills your child is focusing on.  One fun activity is to simply find collage items that start with a particular letter.  You can use spare photos, old magazines, newspapers, online images and clipart that show things that start with that letter.  Or you can use physical objects whose names begin with that letter.  For example, if the letter collage was about the letter "B", you might have pictures of boys, basketballs, boxes, berries, things that are the color blue or brown... as well as some actual buttons and some dried beans. 

Still another idea is to draw a large letter on a piece of construction paper and have your child "glue inside the lines".  You can also cut out construction paper in letter shapes or to buy large pre-cut letter shapes like the one's shown, available from discountschoolsupply.com

My Favorite Things: This one works best if children can cut or tear their own pictures, but they could be simply given some piles with precut items from magazines, etc.  Then they glue pictures of things they like to tag board or construction paper.  At circle time they can talk about their creation.

Color themed collages- collect images or objects which are all the same color. 
school theme, "winter break" theme, snow theme and animals are also fun to do...