Montessori-Inspired Christmas Activities with Spielgaben {Free Printables}

I’ve always loved preparing holiday-themed educational activities. Today, I’m sharing some fun Montessori-inspired Christmas activities I prepared using Spielgaben educational toys and free printables I found online. For one of the activities, I created free printables.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Spielgaben. All opinions are honest and my own. This post also contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).

In case you’re not familiar with Spielgaben toys, they are exceptionally high-quality educational toys designed for ages 3-12. The yarn balls from the 1st set can be used with babies and toddlers, too.

The Spielgaben complete set comes with over 700 pages of full-color printed learning materials. These printed materials help you as a parent or teacher easily use Spielgaben toys educationally with your child and/or students.

Spielgaben Materials Used in This Post

For this post, I used the Spielgaben yarn balls from the 1st set and points (wooden dots) from the 9th set or “gift” used in Froebel education. I also used wooden sticks from the 8th set and wooden parquetry tablets from the 7th set. The activities I’m sharing today will often add a practical life element. I’ll link to free printables which will help make the activities simple to prepare yet attractive. I’ll also tell you where I found the materials for my activities.

Gift Bag with Yarn Ball Activity for Toddlers

For this activity, I used a free Christmas gift bag printable from Christmas-Printables. My granddaughter, Zoey, loved the Spielgaben yarn balls since she first watched them in a mobile I prepared. She doesn’t use them as often now, so I decided to prepare a special activity to focus on her current interests.

Zoey recently turned one year old, and she loves to take objects out of bags and put them back in the bags. The printable Christmas bags I found were the perfect size to hold one yarn ball. There are a number of cute designs on the page. Since it’s still quite a while before Christmas, I chose a winter design with snowman and Christmas tree.

The activity took me about 5 minutes to prepare. I printed and cut out the gift bag on cardstock and then used two pieces of double-sided tape to stick it together. You could laminate the gift bag after printing if you want it to last longer.

This activity fit perfectly with Zoey’s interests. She loved taking the yarn ball out of the bag. I’d say the color of the yarn ball, and then Zoey would put it back in the bag.

Do-a-Dot Decorate a Christmas Tree Fine-Motor Activity

For this activity, I used the free Christmas tree do-a-dot printable from Gift of Curiosity with the page sizing for printing set to custom size scale 40%. I also used the Christmas tree do-a-dot printable from Simply Home with the page sizing for printing set to custom size scale 55%.

I used a large plastic tray from Montessori Services, which is a perfect size for many activities. To focus on fine-motor skills, I added Quick Sticks. A strawberry huller or tweezers would work well, too. Younger children could place the dots with their fingertips. I placed a variety of wooden dots in a bowl so that children can decorate their tree however they wish.

Stick and Dot Christmas Trees

I created free stick-and-dot Christmas tree control cards for this activity. You can download the Simple Stick and Dot Christmas Tree Control Card and Stick and Dot Christmas Tree Control Card by right clicking on each link and clicking “Save as.”I printed them on 4×6” photo paper, although you could use cardstock instead. The cards are meant to be used as models, so they aren’t sized for placing the sticks right on the cards. I used a pencil box for all the wooden pieces.

You could place each of the trees on a 9×12″ piece of felt if you’d like to go with a more traditional Montessori approach. I thought the bottom of the  large plastic tray from Montessori Services worked very well for creating the Christmas trees, though, so that’s what I used in the photo above.

Christmas Pattern Block Trays

You’ll find some free Christmas pattern block cards at PreKinders. I shared the above activity last year in my “Montessori-Inspired Geometry Activities Using Wooden Shapes and Free Printables.

Here’s another Christmas tree pattern block activity that works well with the Spielgaben parquetry tablets. There aren’t enough equilateral triangles in red and green to match the design, so some of the diamond-shaped pieces need to be used. I like this because it’s a bit more challenging and is a nice extension to Montessori constructive triangles.

Rudolph Grid Game Using Wooden Dots

 

For this activity, I used the free printable Reindeer Grid Game from Gift of Curiosity. There are 10-grid, 20-grid, and 100-grid versions. The red dots are disproportionately big for Rudolph’s nose, but I think that makes the activity more fun.

All My Spielgaben Posts

Many of these include links to free printables! (Click on an image to go to the related blog post. The gallery is ordered according to publication date with my latest post at the top.)

Version 4 of Spielgaben Educational Toys 

I highly recommend Spielgaben as an amazing educational material for home or school. Even though the toys aren’t inexpensive, they’re definitely worth the price because of the high quality of materials and number of years your children or students can use them.

Special deal for my readers!