5 mess-free toddler activities

If you're a parent, you'll definitely want to read these 5 mess-free toddler activities that keep me sane.

Some days I just don't have the patience and energy to deal with the messy activities that my kids love.

Ok, not some days; more like most days LOL!

Fortunately, I have found a few mess-free activities that are just as fun and tend to keep them occupied and happy.

Here is what has worked pretty well for us at home.

5 mess-free toddler activities

1. Water painting: Like real painting but without the mess of actual paint! Genius. The Melissa & Doug water paint books are AMAZING! When you paint the page using water, colours magically appear and the best part is after about a minute, the colours disappear which means they can paint each page over and over again.
2. Stickers: Again, the Melissa & Doug sticker books are lovely! They are pretty large in size and have different themes on each page for kids to place the stickers on. For example, there might be a bedroom scene for kids to position the bed, dresser, toys etc on the page.
3. Puzzles: There are so many great benefits associated with puzzles - problem solving, fine motor skills, and patience just to name a few. Not to mention the teamwork and social skills aspect of it which makes it such a great bonding activity for parents with their kids, or for siblings. You can start with simple peg puzzles and then progress to more difficult jigsaw puzzles as they get older.
4. Colour sorting: These can be bought ready-made or you can simply do it with items around the house. I have one that I bought with different buckets and fruits and vegetables to be placed in the buckets according to their colour.  But the alternative to this would be using different coloured construction paper and giving the child different items to place on each paper based on the colour.
5. Scavenger hunt: This one can be done in so many different ways. You can ask your child to look for items that begin with a certain letter, items of a certain colour, etc. The best part is you can do all this while sitting and relaxing on the couch while the kids go searching!

Zero stress activities

These activities have been my go to for mess-free, zero prep and zero stress activities for my kiddos!

I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!