Soapy Finger Paint
Whip 1 cup soap flakes with ½ cup of water. Tint with food coloring or dry tempera. Paint on white shelf paper or waxed paper.
Homemade Finger Paint
Mix 2 cups flour with 2 teaspoons salt. Add 2 ½ cups cold water. Stir until smooth. Gradually add this mixture to 2 cups boiling water. Boil until smooth and thick. Add food coloring, then stir until smooth.
Paint Roller
Pry the top off a roll-on deodorant bottle. Fill it with tempera paint and snap the top back on the bottle. Now you have a giant paint pen.
Play Dough
Mix 2 cups flour, 1 cup salt, 4 teaspoons cream of tartar, 2 cups water, 2 tablespoons salad oil and food coloring. Stir ingredients together, then cook in a saucepan over medium heat until dough follows spoon and leaves the side of the pan. Cool and knead. Store in airtight container.
Kool-Aid Play Dough
Mix 1 cup sifted flour, ½ cup salt, 3 tablespoons oil and 1 small package of Kool-Aid or other unsweetened powdered drink. Add 1 cup boiling water. Stir the ingredients together, knead mixture until it forms a soft dough.
Bubble Soap
Mix 1 cup Joy dishwashing liquid, 10 cups water and ¼ cup glycerin (available at your drugstore). Make bubble blowers from a straw, a kitchen funnel, or a thin wire shaped in creative forms.

from A Mother's Manual for Summer Survival, by Kathy Peel and Joy Mahaffey

Ways to Expand this Activity
Correspond the cookie cutter shape to a holiday and tint the cream cheese the appropriate color (Shamrocks and green cream cheese for St. Patrick's Day). Use alphabet, number and/or shape cookie cutters to make this a learning activity. Add raisins, chocolate chips, small pieces of cut up dried fruit for decorations. Let your children melt matching shapes of sliced cheese on top of the bread.

Preschooler’s Photo Album
When my now 2-year-old daughter was younger, she loved photographs of people, so we bought her an inexpensive photo album for her to paw through snapshots of her family and friends. Now that she’s older, the album is her scrapbook as well. The 4” x 6” plastic pockets are perfect not only for photos but also for her crayon artwork and her “collections” of pennies, buttons, dried leaves, and pressed flowers. The album is a lifesaver on trips-she spends hours hunting and then arranging items in the book. She also shows it quite proudly to all her visitors.

Save that Junk Mail - for your Preschooler
When you receive junk mail, instead of throwing the whole package away, remove any return reply envelopes enclosed and set them aside to make a preschool post office set. Sometimes offers in the mail include stickers or stamps, which you can use for pretend postage stamps. Put your imagination to work, by adding extras like carbons from used money orders (the favorite of children of all ages), and the free post cards offered in some restaurants and cafes. Voila! An excellent toy set which is expandable, disposable, self-replenishing, eco-friendly (since you're reusing material you’d normally discard), and absolutely free!