Aiden really just turned (somehow) 11 months old! This past month, he mostly was drawn to crawling and exploring the house and any activities big brother was working on. At the end of the month, he started to become interested in more fine motor challenges, too. Aiden’s 10 month shelf activities consisted of a mix of new language exposure, discovery baskets, fine motor challenges, and gross motor activities. Here are some of the Montessori-inspired shelf activities he enjoyed at 10 months:
Fruits and Vegetables
With early exposure to new vocabulary in mind, I added these Ikea fruit and vegetable sets to Aiden’s shelf this month. I love that they are safe for “mouthing” as he goes through teething stages. Now, I name the fruits and vegetables as Aiden picks new ones up. Later, they can be used for object to picture matching, sorting fruits and vegetables, color matching, and other activities too I’m sure!
Grimm’s Stacking and Nesting Bowls
We gave these nesting bowls to Aiden as a Christmas gift and, as always, the Grimm’s quality is impressive. This is definitely the biggest challenge on his Montessori-inspired shelf right now. At 10 months, Aiden mostly just unstacks the cups and rolls them around. I’ll probably be putting these back on his shelves when he turns one.
Drum and Tambourine
There’s not a lot of quiet going on in our house these days. Musical instruments are still a big interest for both of my boys! This drum and tambourine are perfect beginning instruments for infants. Aiden loves shaking the tambourine and tapping the drum with the mallet while Asher runs around shaking his bells and maracas and singing loudly. These have been such a fun part of his Montessori-inspired shelf work at 10 months!
Dogs Discovery
Lately, Aiden has become interested in watching the neighborhood dogs. Since we don’t have a dog, I thought it would be fun for him to get to explore them in a different way. I included a couple of Schleich dogs (Golden Retriever and St. Bernard) in this basket as well as a simple board book about dogs with real photographs.
Family Faces
For this 10 month shelf activity, I laminated some family pictures for Aiden using my home laminator and rounded the corners. Aiden likes this activity so much, we’re thinking about getting him one of these custom board books from Pinhole Press for his birthday. He babbles trying to repeat family members’ names after we say them. I won’t be surprised if Asher’s name is the first name he clearly says!
Florida Discovery
Asher has a shell discovery tray out with his work right now at 2.5 yrs, and Aiden has been so curious about it. So, I set up his own discovery basket. For this, I added smaller shells to some clear glass jars and a few larger shells to the basket. I also added one of our favorite books, Curious Critters Florida.
Wallet Cards
When thinking about what shelf activities to set up for Aiden each month, I spend a lot of time thinking about the Montessori philosophy of “following the child”. When I found Aiden pulling all of the cards out of my wallet a few times in the past month, I thought he would be interested in this fine motor challenge. I used an old wallet I had on hand and laminated pictures of credit cards, a library card, and a Target and Starbucks card (couldn’t help myself).
Single Shape Puzzle
His first puzzle! We have this set of Montessori shape puzzles, and I just took out the circle puzzle for now. Later when Aiden is confident with this single puzzle, I will add the others.
Pull-Back Cars
These cars may not be exactly Montessori-inspired, but they have been favorite shelf activity for Aiden at 10 months. He loves getting one of these cars from their basket and pushing it around. He’s not pulling up or cruising too much yet, so I appreciate that this gives him some gross motor work time as he crawls around after these. Also, they are something that he can play with Asher, which he really enjoys.
Object Permanence Box
This object permanence box was on his shelf at 9 months too, but he mostly just traced the ball around the hole last month. I decided to keep it out for the next month because he was still interested in it. He figured it out about halfway through the month and was so proud! We don’t have a lot of the “classic” Montessori-inspired toys, but this one is definitely worth it!
What are some of the activities that your babies have enjoyed at 10 months?
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Ammara says
Awh this is exactly what i was looking for because i noticed my baby is picking up on words and connecting the meanings to her surroundings and herself and the language activities on this post are what I needed. Also same exact thing happened with her having the object permanence box out and just one pushing moment she picked the ball up knocked it on the shelf and then just put it in the hole I tried to keep my reaction calm and pleasant just mirroring get own happiness but she just want that suprised hahaha. She has been living cruising to the table where she likes to bang on her tambourine drum with a pen and a glass cup which is not really glass but naked the same sound and loves just tapping her pen on different surfaces so i understand the musical instruments.
I am living this blog now thank you so much will be sure to keep returning here for more ideas like the diy posting activities.