What To Do

Empty out any remaining spices from the spice rack. Since unused spice racks can sometimes have hardened spices in the bottom of the containers, either rinse all containers thoroughly or run them through the dishwasher.

Fill each spice container with small craft supplies. Craft supplies that work well include, glitter, buttons, beads, colored noodles, foam balls, and google eyes, but you can use any items you have that fit in the container.

If the spice containers have a cover that was used for sprinkling spices, save it. This is very nice to have for glitter. Preschoolers can use the containers as a glitter shaker and easily get the glitter where they want it to be.

If you have more supplies than will fit in one container fill several of them. You will likely rotate craft items through as you use up what you have anyway.

Optional - Trace the lid of the spice containers on a piece of paper and cut out the circles. Glue the colored circles to the top of the spice container. You can label this if you choose or leave it blank.

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Helpful Tips for Parents

• Screen learning (educational apps and videos) supplements but never replaces human interaction as a teaching medium. Learning happens most efficiently in social, conversational contexts.

• Mistakes are how children learn. A classroom and home that treat mistakes as information rather than failure produces more confident, persistent learners.

• Field trips — even to the grocery store, the post office, or the library — are powerful educational experiences. Real-world contexts anchor abstract concepts in memory.

• Involve children in planning: menus, weekend activities, family projects. Decision-making and planning are executive function skills that predict long-term academic success.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if my preschooler is learning enough at home?

Developmental milestones (not academic benchmarks) are the appropriate assessment tool for preschoolers. Verify your child is meeting age-appropriate milestones for language, motor, social-emotional, and cognitive development using your pediatrician's well-child visit assessments. Preschoolers learning through play, conversation, books, and daily life engagement are learning more than their standardized test scores will later reflect. Concern is warranted if a child shows regression in skills previously mastered, or fails to meet speech and language milestones.

What is the role of technology in preschool education?

High-quality educational apps and programs (PBS Kids, Khan Academy Kids, Starfall) used in limited, adult-co-viewed sessions can supplement preschool learning. However, interactive human experiences (conversation, shared book reading, hands-on experimentation, social play) remain far superior as primary learning modes. Screen-based learning is most effective when it is: co-viewed with an adult, limited to 30–60 minutes per day, followed by extension activities in the real world (after a nature app, go outside), and consistently educational rather than commercial.

Related reading: See also our writing readiness guide and our alphabet activities for more ideas on this topic.

🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 📖 Story Structure Understanding — Understanding that stories have a beginning, problem, solution, and ending develops narrative comprehension — the mental schema children use to make sense of increasingly complex texts throughout their school years.
• 📚 Pre-Reading Skills — Activities that involve letters, sounds, rhymes, and print directly build the phonological awareness and letter knowledge that are the two strongest predictors of successful reading development.
• 🧠 Memory & Recall — Remembering rules, retelling a story in sequence, and practicing skills to automaticity builds working memory and long-term recall — the cognitive foundation that learning in every subject depends on.
• ⚡ Executive Function — Planning, sequencing steps, holding rules in mind while acting, and stopping a prepotent response all build executive function — the cluster of cognitive skills most strongly predictive of long-term academic and life success.

Finding a place to store all of the small craft supplies that preschoolers use every day can be a huge chore for preschool teachers and parents. Recycle an old spice rack to create this easy to use preschool craft storage system.

What You Need

An Old Spice Rack - If you do not have an old spice rack that you are no longer using look at garage sales and thrift shops. If you send out a preschool newsletter consider including a section titled "Current Needs". You can not only include a spice rack on your list, but basic household items that you use often and simple craft supplies. Most parents are happy to help provide the things that their child needs at preschool and often they have extra supplies laying around that are not being used. A spinning spice rack works best because preschoolers can easily get to the materials that they need but any unused spice rack will work fine.

Small Craft Supplies - Glitter, buttons, beads, colored noodles, foam balls, google eyes, etc.