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Portrait Collages for Preschoolers

We’re starting our preschooler activities this academic year with the theme of All about Me. This portrait collage craft is great for you and your preschoolers to do together and gives you the opportunity to talk to them about facial features, differences between people and similarities. So here you go a All About Me Portrait Craft for Preschoolers to do with you.

A fun collage activity as part of the family theme for preschool to create collages of the family. Plus additional resources and ideas for the theme.

Preschool Craft ~ Creating Portraits

This simple craft is great for preschoolers to do at the beginning of the year. You can even repeat it again towards the end of the year and see how much they have changed and grown.

By change it’s not just appearance but also their skills in the cutting, gluing and representing themselves.

Materials needed for this self-portrait craft

We have included affiliate links to some of the products and resources as an associate we may earn from qualifying purchases.

  • A mix of coloured paper
  • Skin Tone Coloured Paper for your family – you can use our affiliate link to buy a pack of mixed skin colours here
  • White Paper
  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • Colouring materials (crayons, pencils, markers)
  • Mirror

Preparation needed for Portrait Craft with Preschoolers

  • Cut an oval from skin coloured paper
  • Glue to white paper

Creating Collage Portraits

1. Begin with looking in the mirror. Point out features of the face, look at the colours and talk about things like eyebrows, noses, nostrils so that you can help your preschooler to add these features to their craft.

preschooler looking in the mirror pointing to body features to add to a portrait they are making

2. Start to create portraits, we added our names to the portraits we are going to create.

The more words are presented and associated with objects and actions for preschoolers the more they will become familiar with letters, and words have meaning.

preschooler creating self portraits with paper. Paper shows a round face and adding in blue eyes

3. Leave your preschooler to add in their details, they may need support with cutting out the features (especially younger) preschoolers and if so see if you can tear the paper instead.

As they create try adding in language of colours, light, dark, as well as talk about length of hair to add in some maths language as well.

preschooler using scissors to cut paper for a collage

We’ve always had preschool scissors available first supervised and then for them to use with art and craft supplies. Scissor control is important and making paper to cut, playdough scissors and activities they can cut themselves available helps to develop this.

preschooler gluing "hair" from yellow paper to a self portrait collage
preschool girl adding in freckles to a self portrait collage with a brown pen
family portraits created by a preschooler of mummy and daddy

Whilst we created the portraits we talked about the family members personalities and who else we looked like, how we could create other members of the family, her grandma has curly hair so she would want to make it from cotton wool balls to look like her short curly hair.

collection of family portraits created by a preschooler including a self portrait and those of other family members

We are big fans of Learning Resources equipment here at Rainy Day Mum and this family themed counter set is a great resource that you can use for counting, graphing and sorting for Maths Centre work. With older preschoolers you could start to introduce the topic of Doubling and Halving by using these counters and  mirror – find out how to teach doubling and halving with a mirror.

Free and imaginative play is such an important part of preschool and it is easy to provide toys around the theme of “families” this open sided dolls house makes it easy for children to play separately accessing all areas as well as play together, moving from playing in the same space to playing cooperatively as they progress through the stages of social development in preschool.

Add this multicultural skin coloured dough to your play dough and modelling clay work for the family theme.

preschooler adding colour with a marker to a portrait of her father

More Family and All About Me Themed Activities for Preschoolers

Looking for more family themed activities for preschoolers head over to our Family Theme Activity Collection or check out 3 of our favourites below.

family tree craft for kids
Build my Name STEM activity for preschoolers
Bar Graphs for kids, a simple hands-on math activity for preschoolers to find out about their friend's and family's likes and represent that in a graph.
collage of images from a preschooler creating portraits text in between images reads Easy crafts Portrait Collages for All About Me Theme with Preschoolers
Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

9 Comments

  1. I LOVE how you looked in the mirror and discussed all your features first. That is such a good idea! I also like that you cut paper to create the face instead of just drawing it.

  2. I love that you combined cutting skills with making a portrait. Starting the project by looking in a mirror is a great idea.

  3. I never think to make a portrait with cutting paper. We’ve just been drawing ours. These turned out fabulous!!!!

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