A Montessori Christmas

The Christmas chaos has subsided, the visitors have gone home, we've delivered all the gifts and the last of the leftovers have finally been eaten. Now it’s time to sit back, relax and have fun playing with all our new toys. I had so much fun shopping for Little Bean’s presents this year. I found lots of great Montessori inspired toys online.

My favourite items were these Rainbow Sound Blocks on eBay. They have beads between two layers of coloured plastic in a wooden surround. They come packaged in a beautiful wooden box. They were an instant hit with Little Bean. He loves putting them in and out of the box almost as much as he loves shaking them.

I also bought a plain set of Rainbow Blocks on eBay. The plain blocks have one piece of coloured plastic in a wooden surround. I can't wait to play with these on a light table.

With his current desire to be Mummy’s Little Helper, I thought that some toddler-size cleaning equipment was in order. I got him a rake, broom and a dustpan set. He had a blast raking up in the garden with his uncle.

I found this awesome little ride-on toy at Target in Australia. It's great for developing balance. When we finished our shopping, the carpark was almost empty so we let him have a go while we loaded the shopping into the car. He jumped straight on and instantly knew what to do. Clever little cookie.

I've heard lots of kids raving about how good Kinetic Sand is, so I bought 2kg of it. This will be a great addition to our sensory play toolkit.

Santa gave Little Bean this swing, but so far, he's been most reluctant to try it out. I'm not sure why. Maybe he's scared of it, or maybe it reminds him of his highchair and he thinks I'm trying to trap him in a boring toy.  

Little Bean was spoilt by the rest of the family too. He got these great books from Nanna and Pop.

He also got these magnetic numbers in a cool Minion pencil case. I'd previously tried wooden magnetic pieces but he kept chewing them to bits, much like he does with wooden jigsaw puzzles. I asked for these plastic ones for Christmas. Lets hope these ones weather the punishment a little better.

These are Little Beans first set of realistic animal toys. These are a small size. I also bought him some large sized African and farm animals, plus some small sized marine and Australian animal sets.

One of LB's aunties knows we Montessori and she got him this lovely wooden clock and a wooden numbers jigsaw puzzle. Very cool.

I think that this lot will keep us busy for several weeks to come.