Please note that this post was written toward the beginning of our Montessori journey. I no longer recommend this way of letter learning, nor do I find trays like this necessary from a Montessori perspective. This isn't to say that none of these could be used in a Montessori environment, but these are Montessori inspired and not often found in traditional toddler environments. - Nicole, 2018
And our weekly trays are back! We stopped co-op in the spring with the letter M, so after a welcome back week, we started up with the letter N.
Henry has fun with these trays but didn't choose to work with them as much. There is so much work in the classroom now that he has a lot of other choices.
The first tray for letter N week was a net activity. One large bowl was filled with water and some foam blocks . The children would use a small fishing net to transfer the blocks from one bowl to the next.
This was by far the most popular work this week.
The second tray was a build a nest tray. I had done a similar tray last time we did the letter N too. This time I added a small wooden bird and some more grass. This was another big hit, and some beautiful nests were actually built!
The third tray was a set of name cards on lined paper. Many of the kids are ready to write their names and this helps them do it in a straight line and on a smaller scale. {Do you want personalized name recognition activities for your child? Visit my Etsy shop!} These will be a permanent feature in the classroom this year.
Our fourth tray was a nature sort and count tray. In this tray, I included varying amounts of natural items and some number cards. The children had to then sort the items, count them and match to the correct number. I thought this tray turned out really beautiful and was a great challenge for the kids.
Other things we did this week included:
Nuts and Bolts Tray: this was a repeat from last time, and Henry was sad to see it go.
Number Wheel: another repeat. I didn't see this one get that much use this year.
Magnet Sheet
Letter N salt tray
Beginning Sound Basket: This tray was a review of all the sounds we worked on during the first half of this year (A-M). It included a basket with a couple objects matching each letter and a corresponding uppercase sandpaper letter. I left this out for two weeks and think those that tried did a good job remembering the sounds!
