While the holiday season should be a time of joy and fun family activities, it’s also a time of year when it’s easy to feel totally overwhelmed. Finding your family’s rhythm and creating Montessori-inspired activity trays can help. With activity trays, you’re less likely to feel you need a new craft each day. If you love doing Christmas crafts, you can do as many as you like. If they’re a burden for you, you can just create a few activity trays and allow your child to repeat a craft as many times as he or she wishes during the month.
Turning Christmas Crafts into Montessori-Oriented Activities
I have a post on turning Christmas crafts into Montessori-oriented activities, which gives ideas for turning some Christmas tree crafts into Montessori-inspired activities. You can use the ideas to turn a Christmas craft your child would enjoy into a Montessori-inspired activity tray. Having just a few activities can even help your child meet the needs of a particular sensitive period by repeating an activity over and over.
An activity that’s often easy to make into a Montessori-inspired tray is one using beads and pipe cleaners. Here’s an example of a tray created using a pipe-cleaner-and-bead activity for Valentine’s Day.
Beaded Ornaments Made Into Montessori-Inspired Christmas Crafts
Here are some posts with beaded ornaments that could easily be made into Montessori-inspired Christmas activity trays:
Easy Bead Ornaments for Kids from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
Icicle Ornaments from Happy Hooligans
Pipe-Cleaner Snowflakes from The Craft Junkie
Easy Christmas Ornaments to Make from Frugal Fun for Boys
Ornaments with Pipe Cleaners and Wooden Beads from Buggy and Buddy
Other Activities That Could Be Made into Montessori-Inspired Christmas Crafts
I published a post last week on 40+ Christmas Countdown Activities with links to posts containing tons of Christmas activities. You can also find tons of Christmas activities of all kinds on my Kids’ Christmas Activities Pinterest Board.
When you’re choosing activities, just remember that you don’t need to be perfect. Be sure to check out these two posts from my 40+ Christmas Countdown Activities: Our Simple Advent Calendar Ideas and Tips for Creating Your Own from Fantastic Fun and Learning and Advent Ideas, Rhythm from Little Wonders’ Days. Both posts have some great ideas for making Christmas countdown activities less overwhelming. Have fun! 🙂
Montessori Monday Link-Up
If you have some Montessori activity trays/lessons to share, please link up below. It’s fine to link up a post from your archives – and you may link up anytime during the week! Your post may be any Montessori-inspired activity or idea. It doesn’t need to be related to my Montessori Monday post.
Link up your exact post URL so that we can find your activity if we return to the linky at a later date (which I often do when I’m looking for activities for a roundup post). I publish the Montessori Monday post and linky at 6:00 a.m. EST each Monday and keep the linky open throughout the week.
Please place the Montessori Monday button (using the code from the right sidebar) in your post or put a link back to this post. Let’s use Montessori Monday to gain inspiration/ideas and to encourage each other! If you would leave an encouraging comment on the post linked up ahead of you (along with any other posts you’re drawn to), that would be awesome! Thanks for participating!
Notes: You’ll find a Pinterest Pinning Party in our Living Montessori Now Community (featured on the welcome page). That’s for any kid-related posts whether they’re Montessori-inspired or not. Please feel free to add posts there as well! (If you join our Living Montessori Now Community, your blog feed (post excerpts) will show up on the Living Montessori Now Community Welcome Page if you add your blog link when you sign up. It’s an easy way to get extra attention for your blog posts.)
If you have a giveaway on your blog, please add it to my Family-Friendly Giveaway Linky Page! If you enjoy entering giveaways, you’ll always find some great giveaways there. There are lots of great pre-Christmas giveaways right now! And don’t miss the awesome giveaway sponsored by Alison’s Montessori! 3 $100 Gift Certificates for Alison’s Montessori, US/CAN.
Also, if you’ve ever been linked to in one of my roundup posts, please feel free to grab the “Featured on” badge.
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Linked to Tuesday Tots, Tactile Tuesday, Do Your Thing Link Party, The Mommy Club Resources and Solutions at Milk and Cuddles and Crystal & Co. , Enchanted Thursdays Blog Hop, The Weekly Kid’s Co-op, Living Life Intentionally Linky Party, Preschool Corner, Sharing Saturday, Saturday Show & Tell, Share It Saturday, Show-and-Share Saturday, The Sunday Showcase, Link & Learn, Afterschool Express, and and December Holiday Blog Hop at PreK + K Sharing.
Thank you for featuring our bead ornaments. It is such a wonderful fine motor activity – isn’t it. My girls so enjoy beading and we ended up with some lovely ornaments for the tree that they made themselves and were very proud of.
My pleasure, Bern! It’s a fabulous activity! My kids had a great time making beaded wreaths and candy canes one year, but I haven’t seen the stars before … very cool! 🙂
Thank you for the wisdom shared in, “If you love doing Christmas crafts, you can do as many as you like. If they’re a burden for you, you can just create a few activity trays and allow your child to repeat a craft as many times as he or she wishes during the month.” Connected, I just finished our Advent plan which include ideas for Montessori-inspired crafts and activities. The plan can be found at http://www.traininghappyhearts.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-literature-rich-advent-alphabet-of.html
Thanks so much for your kind comment, Martianne! And thanks for sharing your beautiful Advent plan. It’s perfect to feature as part of my post this Friday. 🙂
Thanks for sharing! Love it!
Thanks, Airamty! I hope you’re having a wonderful December so far! 🙂
totally off topic, hope that’s OK, can you pin this to your special needs board? add it to your special needs blog post/s? it’s by a mom to four children with aspergers, she’s written a book/books and developed materials based on Montessori for aspergers children… this activity she did is wonderful, for any child… thanks deb! http://asperkids.com/unstructured-time-in-the-missing-sock-zone/
Thanks so much for letting me know, Lisa … what a wonderful resource! I pinned it to my Special Needs Board and added it to my Montessori-Inspired Special Needs Support post at https://livingmontessorinow.com/2012/03/13/montessori-inspired-special-needs-support/
Thank you so much for sharing and hosting. You always find the most inspiring and doable work for us. Have a great week!!
Thanks so much for your kind comment, Discovering Montessori! I always look forward to seeing the great activities on your blogs! 🙂
such wonderful activities! though my kids attended Montessori for pre-school MANY years ago, I think creating activity trays for them now wouldn’t be such a bad idea;)
Thanks, Jackie! I can relate … I used hands-on Montessori activities to review concepts when my kids were much older! 🙂
Great ideas!! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!
Thanks so much, Carrie! I hope you and your family have a blessed Christmas. 🙂