One thing many parents of preschool aged kids are concerned about is fine motor skills. Developing these skills are so important for writing and many kids this age are trying to, asking to and learning to write. This activity is a non writing way to still work on some of these skills without feeling like practice.
You will need some clothes pins, water colors, paper, cotton balls and water.
Start by having your child clip the clothes pins on the cotton balls.
Wet the cotton ball, dip in the paint.
Create! With water colors the painting is more like stamping but it's still awesome because the clip forces kids to use a pincer grasp instead of a fist one they can do with a traditional stamp or brush.
As my son says " Tricky tricky..."