5 Mess Free Preschool Learning Activities

How to stay sane this summer, have fun and minimize clean up with these mess free preschool learning activities! Explore some ways to have a great time with your preschoolers while creating and learning. This list offers mess free options for preschool learning activities and crafts that you and your family will love!

Crafts are a fun and exciting way to provide preschool age children with critical opportunities to improve their motor skills and expand their social- emotional development. Mediums such as paint and pencils along with skills like cutting and tracing incorporate a wide array of developmental milestones for little ones. Indeed, children can use learning activity crafts to develop their coordination and explore their creativity while boosting their self-esteem and problem- solving skills. Learning crafts also support children navigating their tolerance of frustration and to learn through their mistakes. Here are some easy, mess free learning crafts for preschoolers and families to enjoy this summer!

Classic mess free preschool activities

Water Painting

This is an old school learning activity employed by my parents that brought both my brother and I great joy along with hours of distraction and entertainment for my parents I am sure.

Painting with water is a mess free (when done outdoors!) fun summer preschool activity that allows children to incorporate their motor dexterity, practice their writing skills and engage in safe play. I remember being tasked with “painting the carport” many days and practicing writing my name on the driveway. I’ve taken to doing this with my own son on warm days and he always asks if he can “go outside and paint”.

What you’ll need:

• Bucket of water
• Paintbrushes
• Outdoors!

Finger Painting

Using a gallon sized Ziploc bag, squirt different colored paints in various inside areas of the bag and then zip it shut. It helps to also tape the edges of the bag onto a flat surface like a tray or table. This keeps it from sliding around while your artist does her work. This is a great mess free preschool learning activity to practice finger dexterity and writing letters while having the experience of the paint textures inside the bag. An added bonus is that it is just simply fun to squish the paint around inside the bag!

What you’ll need:

• Gallon sized Ziploc bag
• Tape
• Paint- as many or as few colors as you like!
• A flat space to work

Pasta Jewelry

An age old classic go to, pasta jewelry! This is a great and relatively mess free activity for your preschool children. Different sized pastas like rigatoni, macaroni, penne offering varying levels of challenge for little fingers to string them together. This activity is best done inside, on a tray and flat surface and encourages little ones to navigate through frustrations, trial and error.

What you’ll need:

• String, yarn, or twine
• Pasta, any shape that can be strung- penne, rigatoni, macaroni, etc.
• Children’s scissors to practice cutting
• Bonus: Use beads in between for extra flair!

Mess free learning activities to hone fine motor skills

Paper Plate Haircuts

Using a paper plate, have your preschooler draw faces: serious faces, happy faces, silly faces, etc. They could draw self- portraits, pictures of their friends and family or teachers. This mess free preschool learning activity encourages developing brains to think about how human emotions are shown facially and to draw their representations of those feelings. Once the faces are drawn, have your preschooler “give the plate a haircut”! Using kid- friendly scissors, your preschooler can cut waves, spikes or curls into the top of the plate to create a hair style for their paper plate face. Another option is to affix yarn to the top of the plate and have your preschooler cut the hair to their desired length and style. This is a great mess free preschool activity to work on cutting skills.

What you’ll need:

• Paper plates
• Yarn
• Tape or glue
• Markers, crayons or colored pencils
• Children’s scissors
• Bonus: Glue some googly eyes onto your face for an extra wacky look!

Adventuring Binoculars

Do you have a mini bird- watching aficionado or exploration fanatic? Upcycle some spare paper towel or toilet paper rolls by connecting them with tape, rubber bands or glue to turn them into binoculars for this (mostly) mess free preschool learning activity. Your preschooler can decorate them any way he sees fit by using markers, crayons, puffy paint, stickers, etc. Take them on a hike or into the backyard to seek out nature’s wonders!

What you’ll need:

• Paper towel or toilet paper rolls
• Tape, rubber bands, or glue
• Stickers
• Crayons or markers

Bonus: Use some string or twine to make a neck strap for the binoculars!

Happy crafting!