Encourage your preschool artists to make winter-inspired art with these simple Winter Art Center ideas. Instead of sticking to the usual art materials, mix things up during this cold season to give your Art Center new life.
These ideas work well in an open-ended art environment, letting kids choose their materials and unleash their imagination in determining what they want to create.
You can give suggestions for how to make snowballs and snowmen with some of these materials, but can also let children use them in the way the choose.
If you have concerns about children using too much of some of the materials, or using them up too fast, you can set some limits. Some materials might cost a little more than, such as the doilies, cupcake papers, and foamy stickers. You can divide them up and decide to put them in the center only one day each week during the winter season. Or, you can make a chart showing children how many of each material they can use each day
Add Cupcake Papers & Sticker Dots to Your Winter Art Center
White cupcake papers can be used to make snowmen. These cupcake papers below are in two different sizes. Teachers could show examples or give suggestions of what to make with these, but also let children choose how they want to use them.
White dot stickers are found at office supply stores or dollar stores. Children can stick these on their paper for snowballs. It’s also good fine motor practice to peel stickers off the sticker paper.
Add Doilies, Sequins, & Foamy Stickers to Your Winter Art Center
Doilies are so pretty for making snowmen! These are the smallest size white doilies, but you can also add different sizes of doilies to your Art Center.
Add snowflake sequins and foamy stickers for collage materials. These are very easy to find around Christmas time and can often be found on clearance after Christmas.
The children might choose to use doilies in different ways, so add them to your Art Center for open-ended art. We have also used larger doilies for a Snowman Small Group art project, which you can see on the Winter Activities page.
Add Small Paper Plates & Cotton Balls
Add small white paper plates and cotton balls to the Art Center. These can be used any way the children choose for open-ended art, but teachers can also give the suggestion that cotton balls on blue paper look like snowballs and that a snowman could be made from two little plates.
How to Make Winter Paint Colors
Children will enjoy using some different paint colors, other than the usual rainbow colors at the art easel. Add different hues of blue to the paint easel. To make different hues simply add white paint to some cups of the blue paint. (In the Fall, I add brown to make the bright paints look Fallish as you can see here.)
In the photo below, I used turquoise paint and blue paint, then added white to one cup of turquoise and white to one cup of blue to make lighter hues. I also added white to the pink and purple to make them more pastel.
Children can use white paint on blue construction paper to paint a Winter picture. Using colored paper gives variety and makes it interesting for children.
Add PomPom Paintbrushes and White Crayons
Clip a pompom in a clothespin to make a “paintbrush” that can be used to stamp snowballs onto paper. I recommend using pompoms for this instead of cotton balls because they will hold up better. Provide a shallow amount of white paint in a cup for children to dip the pompom into and stamp on their paper.
Add white crayons to the Winter Art Center with blue construction paper.
Winter Colored Markers and Crayons
Add Winter colored markers and crayons so the children’s pictures will have Wintery colors. To get a variety of color hues, I got a pack of 50 Pip Squeak markers. Blue, pink, and purple make great wintery colors. Also add white to use on blue paper.
Add Crepe Paper (Party Streamer) to Your Winter Art Center
Crepe paper is something we have in our Art Center all year, and just change the colors for the seasons or holidays. It’s an inexpensive art material that children love to create with! Children sometimes cut small pieces and other times cut longer pieces, and they make all kinds of things with it.
Add Scrapbook Paper Mosaic Squares for the Winter Art Center
Buy sheets of scrapbook paper in blue hues and prints. Cut these into squares of about one inch. These can be used as mosaic squares and glued onto paper for mosaic art. Another idea is to cut them into one-inch strips and have the children snip the strips into squares for scissor practice.
Scrapbook paper can often be found on sale. Or, use a hobby store coupon to buy a rainbow pack of colors. Then pick out the blues for the Winter Art Center and use the other colors for other seasons and holidays (purple and orange for Halloween, green and red for Christmas, red and pink for Valentines, etc.)
Use Paper Punchers for Snowmen & Snowflakes
Paper punchers can be used to punch out little snowmen and snowflakes. Punch them out of blue scrapbook paper or blue and white construction paper. Children can use these for collage art.
Add Tissue Paper Squares to Your Winter Art Center
Add blue and white squares of tissue paper to your art center. Use blue in different hues, and you may even find printed tissue paper with snowflakes or snowmen at after Christmas sales. Just cut the tissue paper into squares (you can cut through many layers at once). Children can draw an outline of their picture and fill it in with the tissue squares. These work well with glue sticks. Tissue squares can also be crumpled into little balls and glued on, so children might want to make snowballs this way.
Add Stencils to Your Winter Art Center
Stencils are fun for kids to use and are great for fine motor. Seasonal stencils can be purchased from hobby stores and educational catalogs.
