Montessori-Aligned Land, Air, Sea Sorting [DIY]

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If you’re looking for an easy (and I mean EASY) DIY that will thrill your toddler, look no further! I am not a fancy DIYer. Fancy DIYs in our home are all done by my mom who has far more skill. This one takes only scissors, felt, and hot glue.

I started by gathering felt in three colors: dark blue, green, and light blue for the Montessori land, air, and sea sorting mat. Felt is one of those DIY materials I recommend having around. I used it for my Montessori birthday walk sun and I know I will continue to use it for more activities like this. Hot glue makes the DIY easy versus actually sewing it.

First I laid out the felt overlapping by a few inches. This told me where to cut and I began by cutting mountains. I cut two humps to make two mountains in the green felt for the land part of the sorting mat. I just did this by feel but you can make it more exact and easier by first tracing the mountains out with a marker and cutting on the lines.

I placed that onto the light blue sky and then began cutting out the ocean in the dark blue. This part was harder than I anticipated and requires very sharp scissors. After a search for our sharpest scissors, I returned and was able to make waves in the dark blue. Since I had to redo it a few times I ended up with a smaller dark blue section than I had anticipated but it wasn’t a big deal.

Next, I glued the mountains onto the light blue sky with hot glue. Then I glued the ocean onto the mountains. My toddler had woken up from his nap at this point and was very excited to start his land, sea, and air sorting but I still wanted to add a sun and cloud to make the sky clearer. I cut those out quickly, he told me they looked great, and I glued them on.

TaDa there you have it, a very very simple Montessori land, sea, air sorting mat. We started this with his Safari Ltd. animal toobs. I went and gathered a sea creature toob and a bird toob. It turned out we didn’t have any land animal toobs so I gathered some small Schleich animals we have, but a land animal toob would be good to have since they are smaller. Once he had sorted all of them he went to grab more animals from his animal bin. You could also grab an ecosystem toob which has something for every category.

My son is 2.5 and the land, sea, and air sort was pretty easy for him, but it kept him engaged and led to some interesting questions. For example, do penguins live on land or in the sea? I had to look this up myself but it led to an interesting conversation about how penguins live. Apparently, they live on islands mostly but some species are adapted to spend months at sea. I think around 2 this would have been great for him. This is a great way to learn language as well. There were some figurines he didn’t know and he learned the name of the animal through doing this.

This can also be done with vehicles (we have a vehicle toob as well but you would want to probably mix it with two more toobs: one for sky and one for sea) and we will likely do that as well. I can also see doing this with our dinosaurs.

Let me know in the comments if you try the Montessori land, sea, and air sorting mat and what you think!