Activities for 0-3 year olds| Toddlers | Montessori at Home
Are you a parent/grandparent wondering how to work with children at home? Is this completely necessary quarantine not doing you any favours? Are you thinking to yourself…. “Well 5 hours of screen time didn’t hurt me…soooo….🙄” ?
Not a great idea. Screen time for more than 1 hour for children below 8 is not good for brain cells. So here’s what I’ve planned to do, I’m going to post some ideas for children to do across age groups These will be interesting things which could be done at home using anything available… Which encourage learning, movement, with or without siblings and some management ideas.
Activities to do with Toddlers (0-3):
- Treasure basket: Place everyday items in a basket and let them explore. Change the items now and then. Expect toddlers to bite or lick the items, so keep them clean! (spatula, mug, napkin, measuring cups, bell etc)
- Pairing: a tray full of containers with different types of lids, cut out little squares of coloured paper and let them match the colours (2-4 colours), pairing similar smelling objects in cloth covered opague bottles.
- Sorting: have three types of pulses in a bowl, and three smaller cups for them to sort it out. Try blindfolds to make this more challenging.
- Transferring: Pouring grains/water : 2 cups, 3 cups, or 1 little jug and three cups, with a cloth to wipe. (or dustpan nearby to collect fallen grains),Sponge transfer: 1 sponge, 1 empty bowl, 1 bowl of water; Spoon/tongs/hand: 1 empty bowl, 1 bowl with pebbles/marbles/pulses and the required utensil
- Large movements: play hide and seek, transferring objects from one corner of the room to the other, dancing to music
- Nature: watering plants and observing them grow is a beautiful experience for toddlers. Arranging flowers in an earthen bowl with water as you pray or sing is a lovely activity
- Kitchen helpers: Rolling chappathis, washing the rice and using a sieve to pour the dirty water into a large vessel, pounding channa and picking out pomegranate seeds for a snack reduce your work too! Putting away the plates and utensils is another fun activity for them, if not for you.
- Bonding: Peek-a-boo or Kannamuchi teaches object permanence. It also lets them know that if you’re away for a bit, you’ll always come back!
- Have FUN!: enjoy getting messy with finger paints, pound the chappathi dough together, let your toddler dress you up with clips, sing along together and read loaddddds of stories to them 🙂
