Day and Night Art for Preschoolers

During a recent Pajama Day, my students and I talked about night versus day. We did a variety of activities to explore this concept. Here’s our cool day and night art for preschoolers to create! The night version even glows in the dark!

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art for preschoolers – creating a day sky canvas

I purchased all of our supplies locally (or they were already on-hand in our school work room). But I’ve created a list of links for your convenience. I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Materials
Blank white canvas
Blue tempera paint
White tempera paint
Yellow tempera paint
Small white sparkly pompoms
Tacky glue

Related: Magnetic Tiles and Glow Sticks

Prep
We created a few shades of blue before getting started. This was accomplished by mixing blue paint with more or less white paint. Nothing fancy about it.

What we did
The children wanted to make sure we had a blue sky for our daytime art piece. Inspired by our Nativity Art from earlier in the school year, I thought it would be pretty to create shades of blue for the sky. One child painted a small white circle in the middle of the canvas. A few others took turns painting different shades of blue around the outside of the circle.

Related: Fun Science Experiment with Fizzy Stars

After the blue sky dried, the children decided they wanted to add a sun to the middle! One of the boys took care of that easily for us. The children have recently discovered my pompom stash and love using them, and this art project was no different. When they asked, I was fine with the inclusion of pompoms. I did ask them to stick with just one kind for fear of an all pompom canvas (although that might be fun another time). They settled on the little white sparkly pompoms to act as white clouds in the daytime sky. I loved seeing how precise the children were about where the pompoms went!

The finished result is a bright and cheery daytime canvas for our classroom. I’m pretty partial to it – what do you think?

art for preschoolers – creating a night sky canvas

Materials
Blank black canvas
Star cookie cutters
Yellow tempera paint
Fluorescent glitter

Related: Starry Night Glitter Art for Kids

Prep
The prep was super easy for this one – place the yellow paint in a container and put the star cookie cutters nearby!

What we did
The children wanted stars in a dark sky for the night sky canvas piece. They placed the cookie cutters in the yellow paint, then stamped the cookie cutters onto the canvas. At first, they were very particular about the placement of the stars. Then they decided to be more adventurous and created a hodge podge of stars all over!

While the yellow paint was still wet, we added some cool fluorescent glitter to it. This way, the stars could shimmer and sparkle in our night sky. The coolest part about this glitter is that it GLOWS when a black light shines on it! I’m just as entertained by this as the children are!

I love how our day and night canvases turned out! Now the children just need to help me decide where to hang them. I’m sure they each have a lot of suggestions for me! Would do you think about or day/night art for preschoolers project? Would your children/students like to create something like this?

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