Toddler Trays - Holiday - Montessori

Last week's Montessori activity trays were such a hit I decided to go again!

Montessori toddler tray: Jingle bells and tongs

I'm so proud of my little guy! When I first demonstrated this tray, he was confounded by the tongs and couldn't quite grapple with them, but this morning he used them successfully and correctly! OK, well, to be fair, so far he's just using the tongs to drop them in the bottle below rather than putting the bells into the tray (LOL, Montessori might not approve of this tray cross-contamination), but he actually did the problem-solving and the work over the past two days to figure out a new skill. He likes to put the bells in the tray with his hands as well as trying with the tongs, and the bells jingle beautifully, so there's a nice sensory element to this tray as well. He both jiggles the smaller tray full of bells and swirls them around in the larger tray. The smaller tray once contained mochi ice cream, and I just want you all to know that eating that stuff so I could have this project for him is the kind of Great Sacrifice I am willing to make for my child. :)

Montessori toddler tray: Clothespin drop

The clothespin drop is a classic children's activity, and I made it "holiday" themed by picking out a red jar and using only red and green clips. So far he chucks in big handfuls of clips at a time (much the way he eats only big handfuls of food at a time), but I hope to refine his technique over the course of the week. This is also a very wide-mouth bottle, so I might dig around the house and see if I can find anything narrower and a little more challenging.