In this article, we bring to you an assortment of Montessori activities that you can try out with your toddlers. Is your little one just about to start preschool? Or is he/she just learning to walk or speak?
Well, look no further. Here are some age-appropriate and upper-efficient activities that they will love doing. Let’s start!🏁
Movement & Music
Walk The Line Activity
It’s like walking on a balancing beam but on a line of masking tape on the floor. If possible, you can also customize the path into a log or curb. If they can do it regularly, it works great for their focus and coordination.
Climbing
Encourage your toddlers to practice climbing a step stool or a piece of scaled furniture. Make sure it is done under adult supervision so that they don’t hurt themselves.
You can also go for indoor and outdoor climbers. This activity is great for kids to burn off energy.
Pro Tip: If you want to do a sensory activity. You can make a DIY crash mat with cushions and blankets.
Kids Yoga Poses
It’s important to get kids interested in doing yoga at home from a younger age. They can practice simple poses like downward dog and butterfly.
This improves their strength and flexibility and will keep them busy. Use yoga cards to guide them with the poses.
Playing an instrument
If your toddler is keen on music, you can teach them how to play their favorite musical instrument.
Drums, xylophones, bells, and maracas make for amazing and safe instruments for the little ones. They can also improve something out of household items, like a metal pot or spoon.
Dancing
Dancing is a great activity to teach kids about body-mind coordination, space navigation, and creative expression.
Just put on some funky music and make your kids dance to their own beat and just be themselves. Gather everyone in the house for a fun family dancing session.
Practical Life
Pouring
This is a basic life skill that helps kids improve their fine motor skills and learn to do certain things by themselves.
Put dried beans in a small pitcher and ask the little ones to pour the contents carefully into a second container without spilling.
Pro Tip: See if the kids can pour themselves a glass of milk.
Preparing a snack
Get your little ones interested in kitchen chores by asking them to prepare a snack. Toddlers can easily spread jam, hummus, and similar stuff on toast/crackers. Get them a child-safe knife and ask them to cut fruits and veggies.
Sensory activity
Playdough Play
This is probably the most phenomenal sensory activity for kids ever! It lets children play freely as they squish or roll the dough in whatever way they like.
I would suggest giving them other materials like playdough instruments, colorful stones, and popsicle sticks.
Pro Tip: You can buy good quality playdough or make your own DIY playdough at home.
Color sorting
Many toddlers love color-sorting activities. Give your little ones a segmented tray or cookie tin. Put together pom poms, buttons, feathers, and other objects of different colors but similar shapes and sizes and ask them to sort everything in different segments.
Pro Tip: Start with basic colors like red and blue or green and yellow so that the kids aren’t confused.
A hot and cold sensory bottle
This activity is customized to help teach your kids to explore temperature variations. Fill two bottles with hot water(make sure it’s safe to touch) and ice-cold water. Next, encourage the kids to touch or shake the bottle to experience the warmth and coolness.
Art
Coloring
This is the most basic and effective activity for toddlers. Give them some crayons and a white sheet or coloring book, and let them explore their creativity.
See if the toddlers have an interest or flair for art activities. They can also use oil pastels or paint sticks.
Pro Tip: To improve their focus, avoid giving them too many art supplies.
Scissor practice
It’s important to let your children learn using basic household instruments like scissors. So, you can start by asking them to cut playdough or cardboard strips. Make sure this activity is done under adult supervision, and they learn to be precise and safe.
Pro Tip: Whatever you use, cardboard or paint strips, make sure you cut them into thin pieces for the kids’ convenience.
Collaging
Provide your kids with a basic collage tray with simple ingredients like glue, paintbrushes, paper scraps, feathers, and similar collage materials.
Guide them through the process of ‘painting‘ with the glue and sticking the materials onto a sheet of paper.
Sculpting clay
Let me tell you something. Toddlers benefit greatly from clay activities. They are amazing for sensory learning, fine motor skills, and creative depression.
Ask them to mold the clay with bare hands. Avoid using tools. They can also decorate dried herbs, flowers, and colorful stones in the clay.
Pro Tip: Use a cutting board to avoid making a mess.
Dot stickers
Provide your kids with a sheet of paper and some dot stickers. Ask them to peel and paste them on top of the paper in whichever way they feel like.
This art activity is also amazing in improving their hand-eye coordination and spatial reasoning.
Language & Literacy
Singing songs.
Want to sing your heart out aloud with your little ones? Well, do it right away because it’s one of the best activities to keep them engaged. Find out easy toddler songs they can sing along to. This is a great way to help them learn new words.
Pre-writing practice
I know. Two-year-olds don’t need to start writing. But if your kid is interested, you can ask them to draw or write something, maybe on birthday cards for Dad, or just scrambling on a piece of paree. This is a great activity to develop their pre-writing skills.
Pro Tip: Allow the kids to experiment with writing materials (paper and crayons, sand tray for tracing, or slate and chalk) and techniques.
I Spy Letters
I have often tried out this basic letter sound activity with my kids when they were toddlers. Use familiar objects like an apple, a bowl, or stones.
Say, ‘I spy something starting with ‘letter sound,’ and see if they can find the right object.
Reading Stories
Clothes Pin Letter Recognition
Fine Motor
Opening & Closing Bottle Cap
This activity is amazing for fine motor skill development. Create a basket containing a coin pouch, jar, ring box, etc. -things that can be opened and closed. Ask your kids to explore these objects by themselves. See how flexible they can do it.
Pro Tip: To make things interesting, hide treasures like toffees or cookies inside the boxes.
Solving puzzles
Who doesn’t like solving puzzles? Also, they are amazing at improving hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and problem-solving capabilities. You can also make your own DIY puzzle at home using online guidance.
Pro Tip: For toddlers, start with simple knobbed pieces with 4-10 pieces.
Pegboard toy
Kids can greatly improve their fine motor skills if they practice this pegboard activity regularly.
Ask them to put pegs into the holes using a pincer grasp so that muscles in their fingers and wrists become stronger and more efficient.
Locks and keys
Toddlers are intrigued by keys because they are shiny, jingling objects. You can do this activity with the little ones, where you give them a set of different locks and keys and let them explore the variations in lock-and-key mechanisms.
Pro Tip: To ensure kids’ safety, keep the key tied to a piece of yarn.
Posting Activities
Ball Dropping
Take a cardboard box and flip it. Now, cut open a hole somewhat larger than a ping-pong ball. Next, give your kids some ping pong balls and see if they can drop them through the hole precisely.
Fine Motor Threading Using Straw
Take an empty cereal container and cut several slits in the lid. Next, give some straws to the kids, cut into half, and ask them to drop them through the holes.
Maths
Counting Activitiy
Baking
Surprised to see baking on this list? Well, don’t be. It is the best hands-on activity for kids to develop maths skills because it involves measuring and counting.
For example, instruct them,” Take 2 cups of flour in a bowl.’ or, ‘Separate the cake in 4 parts”, etc.
Pro Tip: You can search for toddler-friendly baking recipes online.
One-to-one correspondence
Have you heard of this term before? Well, it’s based on the fact that every number has only one matching quantity.
This skill is useful for counting activities. We don’t often prioritize it, but it turns out that it is one of the most important foundational maths skills for toddlers.
Matching Activity
There are so many fun matching activities for toddlers that you can try out at home. Kids can pair up socks or do an object-to-object matching practice to develop their maths skills.
This improves their ability to identify objects and differentiate between colors, shapes, and patterns.
Pro Tip: You can also try doing a DIY puzzle where they match objects to their respective outlines.
Block play
Kids also get a good understanding of arithmetic and geometry through these activities. Hands-on exploration and creative thinking will help them learn maths through their fun playtime.
Pro Tip: Go for classic wood blocks or magnet blocks. Try to follow your child’s lead.
Science
Plant care
Get your kids interested in gardening so that they can stay in touch with nature. You can teach them to plant a seed, water plants in the garden, pull out weeds, etc. They will eventually want to take up gardening as a hobby.
Observing Living & Nonliving Objects
Every mere observation of living objects can be very useful for toddlers. Ask your kids to chase butterflies, notice how birds fly in the sky, or fish swim in the pond. Ask them to observe stuff and then describe to you what they see.
Pro Tip: For better learning, you can ask them to draw pictures to express what they have observed.
Sinking/Floating
Just put together different household objects that sink and float. Next, ask your kids to drop every object in a bucket of water and see if it floats or sinks.
I love this activity because it is efficient and, most importantly, low-prep.
Pumpkin play
Yes, you read it right! This is one of my favorite science activities for toddlers. Give your kid a pumpkin and see if they can study its different parts. They can also wasn’t it with dish soap, scoop and mask the guts, etc.
Fizzy science
Fizzy Science Mix baking soda and vinegar, or create a lemon ‘volcano’ and we all know what happens! Kids are going to love the chemical ‘explosion.’
Any activity that creates fizz is also a great science experiment that kids are easily intrigued by.
Pro Tip: You can easily perform this activity using bath bombs to make shower time more fun.
Playing Card Posting
Conclusion
I hope your little ones love doing these activities. They involve a wide range, from movement and art to treasure hunts. They are extremely helpful in improving toddlers’ sensory perception and basic movements.
Let me know if this article was helpful! Can’t wait to hear stories about how much fun you guys had!