Can I just say that these color themed toddler trays have been so fun? My son has been pointing out colors everywhere, especially yellow and blue. He still gets confused with some colors, but he really understands the concept of color better now that we have devoted a huge chunk of toddler school time to it. In case you missed it, check out this post about our new toddler school schedule. See below for some awesome Montessori-inspired activities for toddlers, all with an orange theme.
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Special Orange Tray: Orange Math Links
You can get these awesome math links from Amazon. The set comes with a bunch of colors. You can make long chains and sort the colors. This tray just uses a bunch of the orange math links.
Color Game: Cups and Blocks Sorting
This game is pretty self explanatory. Simply wrap some cups or toilet paper rolls in construction paper (we did yellow, blue, and orange) and then have a bunch of small blocks in those same colors in a small container on the tray. Have your toddler put the blocks into the matching cup. This will help them get better at matching.
Beading
Bead large orange beads onto orange pipe cleaners. The pipe cleaner was a new beading material for us, we mostly bead onto skewers. It may be hard for your toddler at first because the pipe cleaner is much more “bendy” than a skewer, but with practice it will get easier for them. Make sure to use big beads so the beading is a bit easier.
Coloring
We found a cute wooden lion head at the dollar store and decided to use this for the toddler tray. Have your toddler color something orange that relates to the color. They might enjoy coloring on something that isn’t paper. This is great after practicing how to hold a marker/pencil/pen and will help them improve.
Stamping
This tray has an orange circle outline and an orange dot marker. Have your toddler use their finger to stamp inside the circle to make an orange. At the very end of the week you may add a construction paper leaf to make it look more like an orange. This tray is fun, but may be a little messy.
Small Spaces
This tray has orange popsicle sticks (painted with do-a-dot markers) and an empty container. You can poke holes in the plastic lid just large enough for a popsicle stick to go through. Have your toddler put all of the popsicle sticks into the container through the openings. Toddlers LOVE these kinds of games and this tray should be no exception. You may have to help them for a little while because the holes were a pretty tight fit for the popsicle sticks. Eventually they will start to get it on their own though.
Learning Notebook
Our learning notebook has five pages each week. You can have your toddler do this one each day. The first page is just a name tracing printable. The second is this rainbow (from this post about a rainbow puzzle) with all of the colors colored, except the orange. Here is a free printable with the last three pages for the learning notebook.
My favorite thing about our new toddler school schedule is that I sit down and do these toddler trays with my toddler. It is the perfect opportunity to talk about new vocabulary and just to be more aware of his learning. I am so impressed by how these Montessori activities are helping him learned. Hopefully you are having just as much success with your little one.