Five Senses Smell + Art • 3-5 years
What Do You Smell? Five Senses Art
A two-day smell conversation and art project with nose shapes, children’s ideas, and scented flower painting.
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Pretend Baking + Art
Paper Plate Blueberry Pie Craft
This paper plate blueberry pie craft is a sweet pretend-baking art activity for preschoolers. Children paint a paper plate with blueberry colors, then add brown paper strips on top to make a simple lattice crust. It is a playful way to explore color mixing, pie vocabulary, pattern work, and fine motor skills with easy classroom materials.
Best for: Food themes, berry themes, pretend baking, dramatic play extensions, color mixing, paper-strip lattice work, fine motor practice, and classroom art displays.
Learning Goals
- Fine motor skills
- Hand-eye coordination
- Creative expression
- Color exploration
- Pattern awareness
- Pretend play vocabulary
- Following multi-step directions
Materials
- Paper plates
- Blue, purple, and white washable paint
- Paintbrushes or sponge brushes
- Brown construction paper or kraft paper
- Scissors for adult use
- Glue stick or tape
- Tray or table covering
- Optional: toy blueberries, baking props, or a picture of blueberry pie
How to Do the Activity
- Invite children to paint the inside of the paper plate with blue, purple, and white paint to make the blueberry pie filling.
- Encourage swirls, dabs, and gentle color mixing so the filling looks full of blueberries.
- Let the painted plate dry until it is ready to handle.
- Cut brown construction paper into long strips for the pie crust.
- Place several strips across the plate in one direction and glue or tape the ends down.
- Add more strips in the other direction to make a simple lattice crust on top of the blueberry filling.
- Trim any long strip ends around the edge of the plate if needed.
- Use the finished pies for pretend bakery play, a food theme display, or a conversation about favorite fruits and desserts.
Questions to Ask Children
- What colors do you see in your blueberry pie?
- How many crust strips did you add?
- Can you find a strip going across and a strip going up and down?
- What do you think your pie would smell like?
- Who would you share your pretend pie with?
Teacher Tip: For younger preschoolers, pre-cut the crust strips and let them place the pieces freely across the painted plate. Older preschoolers can try a simple over-under lattice pattern, count the strips, or describe the pie using words like crust, filling, sweet, juicy, and baked.
Activity video
Watch the paper plate blueberry pie craft in action
Use the video after the steps as a quick look at how the painted blueberry filling and brown paper lattice crust come together.
