Printable Face Parts Cutouts for Loose Parts Play
Kids of all ages will love this fun crazy faces loose parts activity, and these free printable face parts cutouts make setting up this make a face activity so easy!
This make a face activity is so much fun, and a great way to combine a fine motor skills activity with learning about facial features, and emotions for preschoolers and older kids.
Young kids love loose parts play. Collecting a variety of different items or ‘loose parts’ for open-ended, child-led play always has great results!
While loose parts play is awesome with whatever treasures you have collected, we’ve made a fun face parts printable so you can make some crazy faces and have even more fun!
Want more ideas for loose parts play?
This article about loose parts play explains what it is, and gives you lots of ideas for items you can collect to add to your loose parts collection so you can enjoy this fun opened ended play.
Making Faces with Loose Parts
Making crazy faces is such a simple activity to set up, but it will really spark your children’s imaginations, and cause lots of giggles! Plus it offers lots of opportunities to learn and practice a variety of skills.
Playing with loose parts is a great way to work on fine motor skills and creative thinking. Adding our printable face parts cutouts makes this activity a fun way to learn about facial features and emotions, and you can even make a self portrait for a great ‘All About Me’ themed activity.
Supplies for making faces with loose parts.
To make some crazy faces with loose parts you’ll need:
- Some face parts cutouts (see the free printable below)
- Some loose parts.
- A sheet of paper or a tray (optional)
Collect a variety of small items that could be used to make faces. Think about the shapes needed to make a head and face, as well as hair and facial features when selection your items. We used string, rubber bands, tooth picks, wooden rings and half rungs, craft sticks, wooden shapes, glass nuggets and plastic gems
To make the face parts cutouts you could collect images from magazines, or used old photographs, and cut out each facial feature. But to make this a quick and easy activity to set up we’ve made a sheet for free printable face parts, simple scroll down to the bottom of this post to download and print.
You might also like to put down a large sheet of plain paper, or use a tray to make a nice defined space for your creations. Or you could use our free printable face template too.
How to make crazy faces with loose parts.
The best thing about this make a face activity is that once you have laid out all the items, the kids will do the rest!
Let your child’s creativity and imagination run wild while they create all kinds of ‘pictures’ with the loose parts and face parts.
I guarantee there will be lots of giggles as your kids make all kinds of different creazy face creations, but there is also so many opportunities for learning!
Manipulating all those small items to get them ‘just so’ is working on lots of fine motor skills that kids need for writing.
This is also a great time to name the different facial features, and to talk about what someone looks like with they are happy, sad, surprised, or scared. You could challenge your child to make a face of someone who is angry, or sad, or happy, and work their emotional literacy.
You can also use this activity to discuss differences in how people look. You could talk about how some people have blue eyes, some people have brown, some people have a small, nose some have a long nose, but despite our differences we are all the same as we all have eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears etc.
And of course, because this activity is open-ended, it gives kids so much opportunity to be creative!
Free Printable Face Parts Cutouts.
Is it just me or do all these dismembered facial features look a little creepy??
They may look a little odd on the page, but this face parts printable is a quick and easy way to get started with this fun loose parts activity.
These printable face parts are also perfect for making story stones, or you could turn them into magnets or use them on a felt board.
This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. It will fit to print on US ‘letter sized’ paper, just be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options to allow for printer margins.
Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.
More Loose Parts Play Ideas
If your kids love creative play they will love these awesome loose parts play ideas:
Thank you so much for sharing these!! I am going to laminate them and put magnets on the back for our magnet play!!!
We added the kids’ own eyes and smiles or different expressions and their own noses too. Thanks for this great idea! Our Preschoolers LOVE it!
What a great idea – thanks
I LOVE this activity. Super cool. ;)
Hi
I was wondering where you got the wooden rings and half lungs from please?
I live in the UK. Thanks
They are part of the Spielgaben set we were given to try out. You can order them here – http://www.spielgaben.com/
Love it
Hey Katie :) I can’t tell you how long I have been searching for this type of file!!!! I am SOO grateful for your work and appreciate your sharing the pieces for printables. I cannot believe you had these here this entire time and I haven’t noticed. Lol. TY
Really interesting! Love it
Thank you so very much!!! I was hunting for just this kind of printable! God bless you!
Thank you very much! That is super cool, funny and very smart!
So cool! Thanks a bunch!
This looks a great amazing activity. My kids will love it.
So nice ! thank you.
So cute! very inspiring….
Thank you very much for sharing this. Perfect for Creative Activity and Language and Communication Programme as it will encourage my preschool kids to talk about their work, different emotions, ideas and thoughts.
I have used this and it is wonderful resource. I now have a class with much more diversity and unfortunately I can no longer use it as it does not reflect my classroom communiity. Would you consider modifying your resource to reflect all the beautiful colours of the world?
It would be awesome to add even more diversity to this resource! When it was made (back in 2014) I used mostly family photos as it was very difficult to find images that could be used in this way that didn’t cost a lot (having to pay for images would mean this could not remain a free resource.)
This is just a small, ‘starter’ set, and you could easily add more diversity and make a set that is perfect for your class by taking your own images. There are lots of apps and software available for free to allow you to easily edit photos to make your own set, or you could do it the old fashioned way to cut photos from magazines.
Thank you so much. We had lots of fun !
Greetings from Turkey !
love it