This holiday season really snuck up on me. Between sick kids and school work, I really just got around to organizing some Christmas-themed Montessori trays for Asher and Aiden. I had some leftover Christmas tray materials from last year when Asher was one, but I really wanted to pull together some new ideas as he’s definitely ready for new challenges. So, I searched the aisles of my favorite places- Target and the Dollar Tree, and I found some fun supplies for a few new trays. Also, Aiden is on the move now at 8 months, so I wanted to be sure I considered him when I planned these out. The shelf I use for themed work is in our main living area so I wanted to be sure that anything on the lower shelf was safe for Aiden. All of the trays with small parts or “baby hazards” went on the top shelf out of reach. I also added in a few simple Christmas activities for Aiden on the bottom shelf so that he could have something to explore with brother. Here’s a glance at the themed work on our shelf this month-
Pom Pom Color Sorting
Last year, I had a similar activity set up for Asher with larger poms and tongs for simple transferring. This year, I wanted to add some new challenges in as tongs have been mastered. So, I opted for the smaller poms with a pair of tweezers this time. This activity continues to strengthen the pincer grasp while working on motor planning and hand-eye coordination, important pre-writing skills. He still enjoys color sorting, so I added that component in as well with a green and red bin for him to transfer the poms into.
Crayon Peeling and Breaking
Along the lines of practical life, I like Asher to be able to make a gift to give to friends and family that he can create pretty independently. This year, he is making peppermint play dough sets and homemade “Christmas” crayons. This tray gives him the practical work on peeling the paper off of the crayons and breaking them so that they will be ready to place and melt in his crayon molds. It also provides more fine motor practice. I find it helpful to include a tray for the paper wrappings so that he can collect them as he works and then dump them in the trash can or use them for a craft project. He gets a lot of pride and confidence from being able to create something (mostly) on his own and I hope it will start to foster the spirit of giving.
Christmas Cutting Strips
If you’re not new to this blog, you know how much I love a set of simple cutting strips for toddler work trays. I usually create my own with some simple images, but sometimes I have to give myself a strong dose of parenting reality and just purchase something instead of reinventing the wheel. Montessori Print Shop has a wide variety of printable resources including these Christmas Cutting Strips and Christmas Tree Cutting Strips that I purchased. Download, print, and go- super easy and well worth a couple of dollars. At two and a half years, Asher still loves using these cutting strips with his preschool scissors.
Christmas Matching Cards
This is another material that I downloaded from Montessori Print Shop. Asher enjoyed the set of Thanksgiving matching cards that I purchased from them so much, I decided to get this Christmas set as well. I love that the images are actual photographs of items children might see during Christmastime and not clip art images. I laminated them with my home laminator so hopefully they can be used again next year. These cards are perfect for classic picture-to-picture matching, but if your child is ready for an added challenge they are great for memory games, letter sound work, and “treasure” hunts around the house!
Decorate a Tree/Gingerbread Man/Angel
I always like to include a couple of art trays in our themed work, so I added in this gluing and painting tray for this season. It includes foam cutouts of Christmas trees, gingerbread men, and angels found at the Dollar Tree as well as glue, a couple of our dot markers, and small items to decorate with. I gave Asher a few different options with this tray because he likes the opportunity to make choices right now. This gives him three different cutouts to choose from and various decorating items- googly eyes, pom poms, buttons, rhinestones, and ribbon. This work could easily be simplified by just offering one cutout to decorate and less decorating materials. Instead of the squeeze glue bottle, we’ve also used an empty nail polish bottle with glue when Asher was younger, or stickers would be fun and simpler too!
Christmas Play Dough Tray
Asher has just recently started to concentrate on play dough for longer periods of time. He really enjoys rolling the dough out and using cookie cutters to make objects, so I added a few of our winter cookie cutters to this tray. It currently has some of the pumpkin pie play dough on it that we made around Thanksgiving time, but we’ll switch it out with some peppermint play dough that we’re planning to make as a Christmas gift for friends and cousins. I love that play dough trays are easy to put together, are usually pretty engaging, and can incorporate so many motor skills and sensory experiences.
Nativity Matching
We’ve been doing our nightly advent activities with our Jesus Storybook Bible, but I wanted to also include an activity that focused on the Christmas Story in our Montessori-inspiried work. We have a few Safari Ltd. TOOBS and love them for matching and language-building, so I was thrilled to discover that they have a Nativity TOOB! I created some matching cards to go along with the figures. To get a free download of these Nativity matching cards, head on over to the free resource library to get access to the Google Drive folder. There are so many Montessori-inspired resources there that you can download and print for free. We try to be intentional about making Jesus’ birth the focus of the season in our family, so I was glad to incorporate that into our shelf work as well.
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Christmas Wrapping and Card Making
Last Christmas, I wanted to have a way for Asher to participate in our gift-giving in a meaningful way. I found this amazing idea from This Merry Montessori and instantly knew I wanted to try it. I wrapped all of our presents in plain brown mailing paper and then Asher decorated them with stamps and stickers. At 1 and a half years, these materials were pretty new to him and he loved the challenge it presented and talking with me about who the gift was for. They turned out so festive and definitely much cuter than my usual wrapping! I’ll definitely be doing the same thing again this year (if I can ever get my shopping done) so I created this tray for Asher’s materials. He also has the option of making cards for friends and family with this tray. This is really like practical life work to him, which is, of course, his favorite kind of work right now.
Infant Sensory Jars
Now that he’s on the move, I wanted to include a few trays for Aiden on our bottom shelves that he could enjoy. These plastic mason jars from Target were perfect for some holiday sensory jars. I placed jingle bells in one jar and tiny bows in the other. He loves the metallic look of them both but he spends more time with the bells because of the sound they make when he shakes the jar. These could be adapted to include many holiday items- wrapping paper, fake snow, cinnamon, tree branches, and candy canes are just a few possibilities.
Mini Stocking
At 8 months, Aiden loves anything that makes a noise. Also, as his fine motor skills continue to develop, I thought he would enjoy this challenge. For this activity, I placed his rhythm egg in a mini stocking from the Dollar Tree. He hasn’t been able to get the egg out of the stocking yet, but he really enjoys shaking the stocking to hear the rhythm egg and chewing on the stocking of course.
In between snuggling a sick toddler and grading papers, it was so fun to come up with some new Christmas-themed trays! What are some Montessori-inspiried activities you do with your kids during the holiday season?
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Rosie says
I really love your activities I will buy anything for November theme… sensorial, practical life,math,language. Thank u