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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.
Resources Recommended for the Family Theme for Preschoolers
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.
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.




Fantastic project and can’t wait to add it to our list of upcoming activities. On a slightly different note, I just wondered what activities you could recommend to help me work on my sons pencil grip or to encourage him to want to draw and colour. I can see from your pics that your daughter is great at holding and cutting and I am really finding it challenging. My son loved colouring in until about the age of two and now he is very reluctant, can’t think what the turning point was. Loves painting and stickers etc but not drawing/colouring and therefore grip is not great. Ideas would be hugely appreciated thanks. xx
Hi Cerys,
Brilliant, thanks for this. We actually gave it a try this morning with a Thomas inspired colouring booklet full of the newest characters and had amazing results so will keep ploughing on! Even after years of teaching little ones my little man still stumps me for ideas so thanks. Wishing you a great weekend.
Love the family portraits. What a wonderful way to encourage young kids to create! Our kids have made self-portraits, but I didn’t think about having them create family members! TY for a great post and some inspiration.:)
Oh I love the mixed media family portraits! What a great discussion you had about similar features between family members. Love it! 🙂