art is not only great for creativity...

Art is amazing for kids in countless ways.  It allows them to be creative, express themselves emotionally, and develop in many other ways.  One of the great benefits of many art projects is that they can also help children in many academic ways - but don't tell them!  

So many art projects can help strengthen their little fingers and hands.  This is super important for children who will eventually be writing quite a bit.

I absolutely love using art for this since you can easily disguise the ultimate goal with beautiful, creative activities.  One of my favorite ways to do this is through ripping, scrunching, and holding small supply pieces.

The particular example shown with this post is phenomenal because they really need to use their finger strength to scrunch up all the little tissue squares to make this beautiful fall tree.  For old or more advanced kids, you can even have them cut or rip their own little squares before scrunching them up.

With preschoolers, I really like to set them up for success and so do not want to give them too many tasks.  We do plenty of other projects where they do get the chance to rip and cut, though!  I do my best to just give them one challenging task for each project so they can feel successful.

This tissue paper fall tree project is really a beautiful piece of art for the classroom or home, and I highly recommend giving it a try if you haven't done it before.  I personally like to cut the trunk with branches out and glue it on a piece of paper for the children.  Once again, you can modify this for older children who could do that on their own.

For preschool, I then supply them with a bunch of tissue paper squares for scrunching.  Once they are all scrunched up, I give them their paper with the trunk and some glue.  For easy clean up, I like to give them tiny cups of washable glue and cotton swabs to paste the pieces on.  I was lucky to get large boxes of tiny sauce containers from Costco years ago so we can use the cups over and over and only throw out the cotton swabs.  But dixie cups or anything you find can work too!

I hope you will give a project like this a try!  If you don't want to make fall trees, you could do so many other great pictures like pumpkins, turkeys, snowmen, etc.

Have fun with it and don't let the kids know they are developing their handwriting muscles!  They will never know :)

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I also have available our entire curriculum for purchase for parents and teachers, as well as a mentorship program for anyone who would like to start their own preschool, too.

Feel free to message me directly at info@youaremysunshinepreschool.com if you have any questions!  

With Joy, Jennifer