Christmas Collages/Preschool Process Art
Process art projects are some of my favorites! I love giving kids the chance to design personalized and unique masterpieces. This idea for Christmas art for preschoolers emphasizes the creative process over the end result and leaves your preschoolers excited about their individual artwork.
If you’re in need of other Christmas art projects and learning activities, check out our full list of the best Christmas activities for preschoolers!
Christmas Process Art Project for Preschoolers
Red, white, and green are such symbolic colors of Christmas, and all of our favorite Christmas art activities for preschoolers are full of these hues! They bring us joy and get us excited about the season and all the magic Christmastime brings.
Frequently Asked Questions About Teaching a Christmas Theme
Christmas is a special time of year for us to recognize the wonderful people in our lives and share gifts from the heart. Create opportunities for young children to share with each other, write notes to show appreciation, or make handmade treats or easy Christmas crafts. Invite children to make handmade Christmas cards for the people they love, or create these colorful Christmas ornaments for DIY Christmas gifts.
Christmas activities for all subject areas are a great place to start. For building math and counting skills, use these Christmas tree counting cards or estimate with jingle bells. Infusing literacy during the holidays is easy with 20 of the best Christmas literacy activities. Grab some super exciting AND simple Christmas STEM activities too!
Make festive Christmas wreaths, create sensory paintings with pine boughs, or fill your sensory table with some hands-on holiday-themed sensory play. If you are looking for lots of Christmas craft ideas, try a sock snowman or pine cone ornament!
Additional Christmas and Holiday Activities
Don’t miss these fantastic Christmas and holiday resources!
The Perfect Christmas Themed Process Art Project for Preschoolers
Grab some craft supplies and sturdy paper and prepare to be amazed at the sparkly Christmas artwork that your preschoolers will create! We stuck with the items below, but you could also introduce all sorts of other crafting supplies like pom poms, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, and cotton balls.
Materials
- Heavy card stock
- Tempera paint (blue, white, or any holiday themed colors of your choosing)
- Paintbrushes
- Liquid glue
- Tissue paper (red, white, green)
- Glitter glue
The Set Up
Gather all the materials needed and prep your area. Fair warning – this art experience involves paint and glue so it can get messy!
The solution? Head into this project mentally prepared for some mess! When I consider that kids need these avenues to explore and inspire creativity, it helps me cope with a little extra mess.
Plus, I take extra precautions by having my little ones wear art smocks. We used these art smocks for all our art projects, and as long as you don’t wash them too frequently, they hold up really well. (They are art smocks, so it really is ok for them to be covered in paint!)
It also helps to offer your preschoolers a contained workspace. I prefer these food trays because they are really inexpensive and they wash up easily. Depending on the art project, I just throw them in the dishwasher!
Making the Christmas Collage With Preschoolers
Invite your preschoolers to paint on heavy card stock with blue and white tempura paint. The goal here is to create a wintery background and involve preschoolers in mixing the two colors to make a light sky blue. Encourage the children to make a prediction about what color they will see when the two colors are mixed together.
Next, invite children to add liquid glue while the paint is still wet. This sometimes creates a purplish, raised effect.
When I let my students do their own squeezing, I always spend a minute or two modeling how. I tell them that it doesn’t take a hard squeeze and I also remind them that they don’t need a giant blob of glue either.
Some preschoolers will choose to make dots of glue, while others may choose to make lines of glue. Either approach works, but it’s important to let your preschoolers have control here! It’s a confidence booster for them to practice independently.
It helps develop control as they learn that harder squeezing equals more glue. Additionally, squeezing glitter glue and liquid glue is a great hand strengthening activity.
The addition of the liquid glue will set the stage for the next step, which is adding tissue paper.
Time to add green, red, and white tissue paper. This step is a great chance to build fine motor skills of tearing, ripping, pulling, and crumpling. Encourage the children to experiment with using the tissue paper in different ways to find the way that they like it. Some preschoolers will crumple up the paper, some will lay it flat.
A great teacher tip is to introduce a sensory aspect as the children crumple the paper and squeeze the glue. What sounds do you hear from the glue bottle? Do you hear anything as you squeeze and crumple the tissue paper? What kinds of textures do you feel as you work on this art project (sticky glue, soft tissue paper, stiff brushes, etc.). Do you see how the colored tissue paper really stands out from the blue background?
Finish with loads of glitter glue! If you are feeling brave, you are welcome to invite children to add more liquid glue and then sprinkle on loose glitter in the color(s) of their choice. Shaking loose glitter should be carefully supervised. However, it builds confidence when they get to independently use the shakers to decorate their art.
Didn’t these gorgeous Christmas art pieces turn out so unique and special? I love that each child made their own decisions when finishing this process art activity, and in turn, they have something to be uniquely proud of. Even though we all used the same process and the same materials, we ended up with 16 completely different works of art!
Don’t Miss the Christmas Books!
I love pulling out my Christmas books at the beginning of the season! Fill your literacy center, circle times, and even nap times with Christmas picture books and cozy read alouds.
Additional Themed Activities
These holiday and Christmas activities will take the stress out of your lesson planning this holiday season!
Christmas Collages/Preschool Process Art
Grab some craft supplies and sturdy paper and prepare to be amazed at the sparkly Christmas artwork that your preschoolers will create!
Materials
- Heavy card stock
- Tempura paint (blue, white, or any holiday themed colors of your choosing)
- Paintbrushes
- Liquid glue
- Tissue paper (red, white, green)
- Glitter glue
Instructions
- Gather all the materials needed and prep your area. Fair warning - this involves paint and glue so it can get messy!
- Invite your preschoolers to paint on heavy card stock with blue and white tempura paint.
- Next, invite children to add liquid glue while the paint is still wet.
- Add green, red, and white tissue paper. They can crumple it first if desired!
- Talk about the sensory aspects of what they're doing as they create.
- Finish with loads of glitter glue! They can also carefully add loose glitter.
Related
Check out some of our other easy Christmas art projects for preschoolers!
I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
