Christmas Montessori Inspired Tot Trays

My son (Little Bee) loves to explore activities that inspire his creative artistic side and also captivate his learning. In this special holiday post, I have compiled 8 Christmas Montessori Inspired Tot Trays for toddlers and preschoolers to enjoy!

Christmas Tree Dot Painting

Dot painting is always a fun activity in our house. I gave Little Bee a tray full of rainbow paint colors and Q-tips to paint with. He likes painting the white dots on the Christmas tree printable and also smudging and painting all over the paper. It’s not a big deal to me if he doesn’t paint the tree “pretty.” I encourage his creative side and watch as he enjoys the process!

Candy Cane Tree Decor

A simple fine motor activity for a toddler or preschooler is to bend festive pipe cleaners into candy cane shapes and then hang them on the tree. Children love to develop their independence by helping to decorate the tree. This is a safe ornament for them to create and hang all by themselves.

Christmas Tree Counting Mats

I found this wonderful Christmas Tree counting mats printable on the “Confessions of a Homeschooler” blog. Little Bee used his Montessori number cards and counters with this printable. The child can transfer the “counters” with his fingers or with tweezers to work on fine motor muscle development. 

Pre-Reading Christmas Card Matching

Matching the same picture and word cards is a great way to help a child with pre-reading vocabulary. Matching activities help a child with these skills because it builds concentration and similar shape recognition. This festive Christmas printable was found on the “Our Worldwide Classroom” blog.  I presented the cards to Little Bee and told him that this is a matching work. (He is very familiar with matching work and knows what that means.) He studied the cards carefully and then placed the pairs together. I started with three pairs and then increased it to five pairs. This was his first time matching the words and he did a wonderful job with a little guidance from me to help him recognize the similar word shapes.

Here is one more Christmas matching activity for toddlers. To make this matching work more challenging, Little Bee used his tweezers for transferring the card to its match.

Prewriting Sparkle Sand Tray – C is for Christmas

The sand tray is a wonderful exercise for the child to sensorially develop fine motor movements for writing. To make this holiday prewriting sand tray more interesting, I added silver sparkle to the white sand. I found this tray, white sand, and silver glitter at Michael’s craft store. This tray can be filled with sand, salt, oatmeal, cornmeal, or other material. The preschool aged child can practice writing letters and numbers in the tray. A younger child can create lines and shapes in the sand tray. Please visit, “To the Lesson!: Reflections on the Sand Tray” for more ideas.

Sensory Sparkle Tray

Little Bee enjoyed using the sparkle sand tray for creating designs with his plow truck. He pretended that it was snow and plowed the sparkle sand around in circles.

Christmas Wreath Art

This Christmas wreath art activity was inspired by the Crafty Morning blog – “Dish Brush Christmas Wreath Craft for Kids.” Instead of using a dish brush, Little Bee used a wire scrub brush. He had a blast blopping the green paint all over the paper. After he was done creating his masterpiece, I cut out the design in a wreath shape. Little Bee decorated the cut out wreath with Christmas stickers and then we hung our wreath on the front door.

Thank you for your visit! You may also enjoy 10 more Christmas Tot Trays from last year.

10 Christmas Montessori Inspired Tot Trays

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