*This post contains Amazon Affiliate Links*
I may have mentioned before that I really gravitate towards the Montesorri Method of education. In a perfect situation, I love to have an amazing prepared environment full of stimulating activities tailored to my charges wants and needs. However, I really like a good theme which means I’m running out of October days to fill with all the fun stuff I want to expose my friends to.
J, who is 15 months, gets so excited when I come in the door each day. He reaches and grabs for whatever I have brought with me. I’ve also noticed that he is able to really focused when I isolate a tool or activity on a tray for him. So this week I created 7 Halloween themed toddler fine motor work trays that can be scaled for younger toddlers!
You will notice that each tray has an extra fine motor tool attached to it. While these are not necessary by any means, they are super helpful to have around. You can find them here. I find this set to be high quality and durable for the long term. If you aren’t in the market for this set, the dollar tree usually has tongs in their teacher section. I have also found mini food tongs at Hobby Lobby.
Our first tray was the inspiration for this post! Having a few small objects to place into an assortment of containers is a great way to get your young toddler to use his pincer grasp. I showed J how to place the mini pumpkin inside the bottle and how to dump it out one time and he continued to drop and dump for about 2 minutes. Which in toddler time is a lifetime! Having different size containers helps with spatial awareness as well.
This tray is a two for one! You can have your older toddler sort the pom poms by color into the jars using the squeeze tool or fingers, she could also fill the pumpkin tray using the tool. You could also use the tongs tool.
A younger toddler would have tons of fun using the scooping tool after you dump the pom poms onto the tray.
I love this activity so much. Simply place rubber bands around your pumpkins and have your toddler remove them. Older toddlers may be able to put the rubber bands back on as well. This tray is endless!
This is my first attempt at this spider game. I’ve seen it all over and wanted to try it myself. I wish I had some white yarn so it looked like an actual spider web! I used a small plastic book tray but I’ve also seen this with a laundry basket or a smaller wicker basket that you can weave yarn through. I’ve added all the tools to this one so we can see which works better!
I’ve been doing this activity for years, however I could not find my multi colored spider rings this time around. Dollar tree to the rescue! Younger toddlers will just place the spider on the straws. With older toddlers I would have them sort by color on each straw. You could also have them make patterns with their spiders. In years past I’ve also added a dice to roll and add the number of spiders to each straw.
Many years ago, one of my buddies was in speech therapy. The therapist came up with this fun idea to engage some unused muscles in my charges mouth. She taught us this game where we would use straw to blow objects across the floor using our breath. It was so much fun! We would tape down a large square on the floor and challenge each other to push spider rings outside or inside the square. I’ve added the water tool as well to this tray to use as an air blowing device!
There’s a lot going on with this tray! I’m going to have my older toddler, E, sort the spider rings by colors using the tongs. J will use his pincer grasp to pick up the straw pieces. I’ve also added the pumpkin tray to make patterns or one to one correspondence practice.
I hope you’ve got some great ideas from this post! Feel free to adapt these for your own toddler. These trays can also be themed for many seasons not just Halloween! I’d love to hear your ideas on Instagram @rachrunstx or theteachingnannyblog@gmail.com!
The Teaching Nanny 
2 Comments