37 Montessori Activities for Hands-On Learning

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.

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.

 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.

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. 

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.

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 paper strips or cardboard strips. Make sure this activity is done under adult supervision, and they learn to be precise and safe.

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 their bare hands. Avoid using tools. They can also decorate dried herbs, flowers, and colorful stones in the clay.

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 in a salt tray or a sand tray.

This is a great sensory play activity to develop their pre-writing skills.

I Spy Letters

I have often tried out this basic I Spy letter activity with my kids when they were toddlers. Use a plastic bottle and fill it with rice. Write some alphabet on small square pieces of paper and add in into the bottle.

Now, shake the bottle and see which letter appears. Ask your kids to say words starting with this letter sound.

This activity is beneficial for improving kids’ vocabulary in a gamified way.

Reading Stories

This timeless activity is truly invaluable for fostering a lifelong love of reading and learning. Sharing stories with your child not only boosts their language and vocabulary skills but also ignites their imagination and encourages critical thinking.

It creates a wonderful bonding experience, helps develop empathy as they connect with characters, and provides a peaceful opportunity for shared connection. It’s a fundamental activity that nourishes their minds and spirits!

Clothes Pin Letter Recognition

This “Clothes Pin Letter Recognition” hands-on activity is an incredibly effective and engaging way to teach letter identification, both uppercase and lowercase.

As children manipulate the clothespins to match letters, they are not only mastering the alphabet but also significantly strengthening their fine motor skills and pincer grasp, which are crucial for writing.

It’s a fun, interactive, and tactile approach that makes learning letters both impactful and enjoyable.

Fine Motor

Opening & Closing a 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 be.

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.

 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.

Posting Activities

Ball Dropping

Take a cardboard box and paint it with animal faces. Now, cut open a hole somewhat larger than a small plastic ball.

Next, give your kids some colourful balls and see if they can drop them through the hole precisely.

Fine Motor Threading Using a Straw

Take an empty cereal container or a toilet paper roll and cut several slits or make holes in it.

Next, give some straws to the kids, cut in half, and ask them to drop them through the holes.

Maths

Counting Activity

This “Counting Activity” activity, featuring colorful cupcake cutouts with numbers and corresponding buttons to count, is an exceptionally engaging way to build foundational math skills.

It’s excellent for reinforcing number recognition and one-to-one correspondence, as children count out the correct number of buttons for each cupcake.

This hands-on approach makes abstract counting concepts concrete and fun, while also developing fine motor skills as they manipulate the small buttons.

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 into 4 parts”, etc.

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.

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.

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.

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, colours, paint brushes and see their creativity what they can do with it.

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.

Playing Card Posting

This seemingly simple “Playing Card Posting” activity is incredibly effective for refining crucial fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as children carefully slide cards into a slot.

It also subtly introduces concepts of sorting and organization, and it’s wonderful for developing concentration and patience.

It’s a low-prep, highly engaging activity that offers surprising developmental benefits through focused, repetitive play.

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.