October 14, 2020

Montessori Inspired Christmas List 2020 for the Preschooler

This is the third post in our Christmas gift idea series. We shared our tried and true items that we recommend for Montessori littles. Many of these items will be in rotation in our home for years to come. We also shared our Montessori Inspired Christmas List for Babies. Now on to our preschooler!

When making our Christmas list, I revisit our toy philosophy. We look for toys that are:

Open Ended
Not loud or obnoxious
A natural material or a good quality plastic that is safe (although we try not to do much plastic!)
Developmentally appropriate (for where they are today and where they will be in a few months!)
Is not a duplicate
Falls in line with Montessori (especially if educationally related!)
Not electronic (no tablets, games, phones, etc.)

We then consider our child’s current interests, where our child is developmentally, and what is coming next in the scope and sequence. Although we don’t introduce the next Montessori materials through gift giving, I find it helpful to look at where we are going. In addition to scope and sequence, I like to revisit “Toddler Discipline” by Aubrey Hargis. She does an excellent recap of each stage from 1-4. I honestly hope that she does a book on preschool and elementary aged children!

Our oldest is very into imaginative play, creative play, hands on work, real life experiences, (practical life is life ha!), puzzles and books. She spends most of her days building with her blocks, reading, playing with our homemade playdough (which is totally safe for little sis to eat when she finds it LOL!), painting, drawing, working puzzles (she is LOVING the Montessori ones right now) and then doing practical life inside and out. She is also really into rocks this fall. We are going to add to her collections to give her space to dive deeper into these activities.

Before we dive into her list, I wanted to share our joint gift for both our girls this year. Each year we want to do a joint gift with our children. The purpose is to have community items that are something everyone will play with. They will be available to everyone to learn turn taking and sharing organically. Last year I was expecting our second child (and I was convinced she would come early!) and we gifted them the Grimm’s Large Stepped Pyramid. They both are drawn to these and LOVE them. Our oldest spends more time building but our 9 month old loves to play with a few blocks or go into destroy mode (knocking over towers is her favorite!)

This year we are gifting them an heirloom item- my wooden doll house that was made for and given to me as a little girl! I am staining/painting it and grabbing some new furniture for it. This is something that both girls will play with for a long time. We are grabbing furniture for it and gifting our oldest dolls to go in it since she is the one that will play with it most at this time.

Plan Toys Classic Dollhouse Furniture

In addition to this, we do a book and a movie. We open the movie on the Eve of Christmas Eve and the book on Christmas Eve along with their Christmas Jammies! We are leaning towards grabbing “Letter from Father Christmas” by J. R. R. Tolkien. It’s the 100th anniversary of his first letter written to his oldest in 1920! The movie we picked for this year is The Star. It is described as a sweet story of the nativity from the animals perspective. I scoped it out on common sense media before selecting it.