Playing with colours, making things with glue, adding sparkly bits and feathers. Any project you take on in Arts and Craft can make a serious mess in your homeschool classroom. Here are some tips to minimise the mess and make it easier for you to clean up afterwards.
Always Cover the Table
This is the golden rule. The spills are going to take place and you can not avoid them. Best thing to do is ensure that you have a nice thick plastic sheet which is adequate to cover the full length of the table your children will be working on.
Add Aprons or Covers
If you don’t want to have to change the clothes of all the kids, make sure that you cover them up with kitchen aprons or simply take some old shirts. Ensure that the homeschool students cover up the good clothes and that way the cover clothes can be washed and used again for the next arts and craft project.
Keep a Kitchen Tissue Roll Handy
There is going to be many a messy hand that you need to clean up so keep the kitchen roll handy. You can dry off wet paint, sticky glue and any other stuff. Even a dirty rag can be used for the same purpose. This makes sure that paint coated hands don’t end up painting other surfaces inadvertently.
Limit the Supplies
The more the supplies available the greater the final mess. Take out only limited quantities of the supplies and ration them out to each child individually. Let the common supplies lie in the centre of the table and be used by everyone. This will also reduce the amount of things on the table and subsequently the risk of spilling stuff.
Have a Disposal System in Place
There is going to be a set of stuff that is not as pretty as they want it to be, or made not quite right. Plus all the stuff that is extra from the cutting and fine tuning of the craft project. These things can be disposed off in a cardboard box designated for trash. This will allow the eventual clean up to be faster.
