Activities for Toddlers (12-18 Months)

I’m often asked by my readers and fellow Moms for the activities suitable for certain ages.  So I decided to sum up Vito’s favourite activities since 12 months old.  First in the series, I’m sharing activities that Vito enjoyed when he was between 12-18 months old.   (Always supervise your child in each of these activities)

Activity Trays for 33 Month Old Toddlers

Hello everyone! We only have two more weeks before school opens so I decided to postpone Vito’s Fruits and Art Unit for the rest of the month so I can spend quality time with the boys and not think about activity preparations.  With this I’m sharing Vito’s activity trays which he started working on early this month. Vito only spends about 20 minutes for our “themed units” and the rest, he would either do free play or work on these trays.  These would entertain him while I do house chores, sometimes I supervise especially if we use glass bottles.

FREE Printables for Alphabet Learning Sheets

Hi everyone! I’m often asked in my Instagram account on where I get our printed learning materials for learning letters (letter recognition and pre-writing) so I’m going to share with you the links of my sources here as it’s difficult to do that in IG.

Teaching Toddlers How Plants Grow

After our watercress activity, I introduced Vito to the life cycle of a green bean plant using Safari Ltd Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant and the cards from The Wise Owl Shop.  Check out some of the activities that we worked on during the past few days that demonstrate how plants grow to toddlers.

Growing Watercress with Kids at Home

Vito is 33 months old.

For the second week of August, we’re learning about plants!  So to start with, the boys and I grew watercress at home and they totally love it!  Another activity that is suited for siblings!  Take a look at how Vito and Mavi worked on this together.

Introducing Toddlers to Animals in Land, Water and Air

I had two presentations for the land, water, and air animals.  I first showed Vito what’s land, water, and air animals.  We worked with action songs to demonstrate how animals move in land, water, and air.  After I presented the pictures and the trays, Vito sorted out the animal figures I prepared for him.

Introducing Wild Animals to Toddlers

VIto is 32 months old.

As we continue our wild animals exploration, the boys and I watched documentary shows in Netflix about animals in Africa.  Vito enjoyed watching the shows and kept on naming the animals that he can identify.  With this, we worked on vocabulary words by identifying other wild animals that he’s not familiar with like gorilla, panther and rhinoceros.  We used our Safari Toob Wild animals for this activity together with the matching cards we got from The Wise Owl.

Animals and their Covers

My boys love animal covers!  We used this whenever we want to play around with or beautiful animals from Schleich or whenever Mavi wants to replicate them through drawing.

Montessori Inspired Activity: Musical Instruments

As we continue our Sound and Music Unit, I also introduced the different musical instruments.  Of course, it would be best if we have all of these (LOL) or least own one, but since we don’t these beautiful musical figures from Safari Toob will do.

Montessori-Inspired Sounds and Music: The Musical Hand Bells

Vito is 32 months old.

I prepared a few simple activities for our Sound and Music Unit.  It was the week of heatwave so I grabbed the opportunity to bring the boys outside more often to practise their biking and scooting skills, and as for me, able to run and lose a few pounds LOL.

Joking aside, this musical hand bells was a favourite of Vito. He loves using just to listen to the sound it makes and at times ringing the bells together to make “music”.

Homeschool Activities for Toddlers 32 Months Old

I’d like to share a summary of Vito’s work tray activities at 32 months.  These are the trays that are either part of our themed activities or just some random ones that I prepared for him in line with his current interests.  I hope that this will give you an idea on what to give your children in case he/she’s of the same age.  Keeping records of Vito’s work trays are also a means for me to track his development and progress per month.

LETTER PATTERNS

One of the challenging task that he’s working on this month.  We’re working with letters CUSN-POLH and here he’s doing the letter C.  This printed material was from The Confessions of a Homeschooler and the magnetic board plus the patterns were from Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden Magnetic Pattern Blocks Set.

SANDPAPER NUMBERS AND COUNTING WITH DO DOTS

He loves the sandpaper numbers!  So we worked on tracing the numbers first and I demonstrated by counting it using the do a dot marker.  So aside from pre-writing, it’s also a great practise for 1:1 correspondence.  The sandpaper numbers can be purchased here and you can get the markers here, Do a Dot Markers.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

We love Safari Toobs and its his first time to use the Musical Instruments Toob.  As of the moment, we do the typical match to figure and picture using the 3-Part Cards from The Wise Owl (Philippine based).  You can check about this activity here, Montessori Inspired Activity: Musical Instruments.

ANIMALS IN THE WILD

Learning about the animals in the wild, using this set from The Wise Owl again (the 3-Part cards for the Safari Toobs Wild Animals is also in my 200+ Toobs Matching Cards Bundle Pack).  He can name a few but find it difficult to say the names of other animals like the rhino, hippo, and panther. You can check the details of this activity here, Introducing Wild Animals to Toddlers.

ANIMAL COVERS PATTERN MATCHING

One of our favorite printable from our shop (Animal Skin Cover Matching Cards)!  Matching animals with their covers.  We are using animals from Schleich and Safari Toobs Wild Animals.  You can check the activity here, Animal Skin Covers Sensorial Matching Activity for Preschoolers.

MUSICAL HAND BELLS

We’re having the Sound and Music Unit and one activity is using these musical handbells.  You can check how we conducted our activity here, Montessori-Inspired Sounds and Music: The Musical Hand Bells.

ANIMALS AND THEIR LETTER SOUNDS

A little bit of phonics activity by matching animal names to their beginning sounds.  We just worked from letters A to E.  Animals are from Schleich and foam letters from Munchkin Letters and Numbers Bath Toys.

MONTESSORI KNOBLESS CYLINDERS

This is one of his favorites for this month.  You can get the Knobless Cylinders at any Montessori shop or here.  Read about this amazing sensorial material and activity here, Montessori Sensorial Activities using the Knobless Cylinders.

LETTER TRACING

Vito is currently obsessed with tracing so I got him a dry wipe/wet wipe chalk markers which has no strong scent.  I used to purchase those dry erase pens that are using ink but they really smell, and I just discovered these chalk markers which are perfect for Vito. It’s non toxic, has bright colors and can be removed easily!  You can get these from AmazonUK and AmazonUS.  The wipe and erase cards were Mavi’s and I purchased them from Singapore (Kumon), you can also get them here.  And if you have more time and want to create your own cards you can also get this printable instead, Alphabet Tracing Mats.

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Montessori-Inspired Activity: The Life of a Honey Bee

Vito is 32 months old.

The appearance of the honey bees in our front and backyard has led us to look into the lives of these beautiful creatures who are the main source of honey.  Vito is terrified of them but not Mavi.  We were out the other day catching a few of them, observing how they produce the buzzing sound and freed them up again.

Montessori Inspired Insects Activity

I am reintroducing some Montessori-inspired activities once again to Vito.  We’ve been doing lots of free play for the past few days that I miss giving him “prepared” activities.  As he will turn three in the next few months, I’m planning to have a more “structured” schedule and curriculum for him this school year. I’ll share that later on once I figure out how to do that. 

Anyway, so in our Insects Unit, I borrowed these cards from my friends at The Wise Owl.  They’re Philippine based online shop that provides Montessori cards and Safari Toob figures locally.  Their cards are lovely and the images are so beautiful!

Montessori Sensorial Activities using the Knobless Cylinders

Vito is 32 months old.

The main purpose of sensorial activities in Montessori is to help the child sort out the many and varied impressions given the senses.  The sensorial materials that you mostly see are designed to help the child develop discrimination, order and to broaden and refine the senses. 

Knobless Cylinders are sensorial materials that are used for visual discrimination of dimension, width, length and size.  Vito love these cylinders! We are using this every morning and he can’t seem to get enough of it!

Montessori Inspired Tweezing Insects Activity

We started off our Insect Unit this week by tweezing insects from the grass. 

 

Collection of Transportation Activities for Toddlers

Vito is 30 months old.

We’ve just concluded our week long transportation-themed activities and I would like to share with you the activities and materials Vito loved and enjoyed using!  Hope you find these helpful!

Transportation Unit: On the Road Vehicles

Vito is 30 months old.

I was pretty busy the other day that I didn’t have time to think of activities related to road vehicles. So I made the boys create their own landscape of a road with vehicles on it. 

Transportation Unit: Water Vehicles

Vito is 30 months old.

Both of my boys were looking forward to this Transportation Unit as they love cars, trains and airplanes.  We started off by introducing Vito the water vehicles using Safari Toob In the Water  figures, a little water sensory tub and matching activity.

Beginning Sounds Through Language Objects

This week, Vito and I are exploring beginning letter sounds through objects we can find at home.  This is very similar to the Alphabet Sort Montessori Inspired activity, but in our case we are not sorting the objects yet.  What Vito and I are doing is to just  name or identify the objects and match them to our control sheet.

Teaching Kids About their Lungs

I forgot to share this simple activity we did during our Body Unit week.  The boys had so much fun learning how their lungs work using our homemade lung materials!