It's the season of holidays! In our home over the next few months we will celebrate Halloween, harvest celebrations, changing of the seasons, Christmas, New Year and Valentines Day. With all these seasonal celebrations, there's the potential to continuously be creating Montessori inspired activities and trays with my toddler and preschooler. And, guess what...I don't have time for that at all! HA! Instead, I have created a few simple seasonal activities and then I can simply make a few adjustments and it works for the next season.
Here's a look at our seasonal trays. These are all styled for Halloween, but with a couple quick changes, they will be able to work for any of the upcoming holidays.
Montessori Friendly Seasonal Trays for Preschoolers and Toddlers
I'll share a little bit about each one and how I'll change to make them more flexible.
- Sorting: More geared for Ted, sorting by shape. Penelope just likes to play with the pieces. Could add numbers to change it up, or letter sounds. Just change the items to match the season. Tray is divided with simple washi tape.
- Coloring: This is geared more toward Penelope but Ted will use too. Simple rock crayons in seasonal colors. Change the drawing medium and colors to match the holiday.
- Play dough: for both to explore. I have some simple halloween manipulatives and some tools. I will just change up the filler for each holiday and occasionally rotate the tools.
- Stickers: This is more for Penelope with the large stickers but could easily change these to match the holiday and the fine motor skill of each of them.
- Washi Tape: This particular tray is geared toward Ted. He can pull the tape and make cuts. I can easily switch out the type of tape or switch to a washi tape pull tray for Penelope.
- Punching: This is for Ted. A seasonal punch to make little shapes. This can easily be changed to include gluing, sorting or posting of the shapes. If I don't have a seasonal punch, then it can be transformed to stamping.
Remember these are just what are working for my family with a 20-month-old and a 4-year-old. If over the next few months, they stop working, I'll change them up more extensively. We get the chance to be flexible and meet the needs of our individual children as Montessori parents!
How do you bring the holidays to life on your shelves?
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