Montessori Play 21-24 Months

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through my link but does not change your price.

If you’ve been here before you might know for a while I was doing these monthly. I realized it wasn’t sustainable but also I can share way more about the progression to share on a three-month basis. There was so much learning between 21 and 24 months and I look forward to jumping in and talking about it! He was really into shelf work this month including some activities such as shape sorters and puzzles he hadn’t particularly loved in the past. Instead of simply going through our shelf since we had a few rotations during this time, I am going to discuss several categories: puzzles, matching, color matching, and fine motor work.

Puzzles

If you’ve read these monthly play updates before you might know puzzles of some sort are usually on our shelf but are usually not the preferred activity. There was a huge change these past few months and puzzles have become a total favorite. This was kicked off when we got my son this vehicle puzzle. For a vehicle lover, this was awesome. I think having a puzzle that really met his interests was a great way to get him actually into puzzles.

I then introduced some puzzles we have had around for awhile including this pincer puzzle from Lovevery. He had not been particularly interested when it was first sent but now loves it. One interesting note on that one is he struggles to do it right side up. Upside down though he does it no problem! I reintroduced all the older puzzles he hadn’t been interested in at the time.

Once I reintroduced a bunch of pincer puzzles we started doing puzzle mix-ups. Here I would put a basket of puzzle pieces in the center of the table and the puzzles around the side. This became like a giant puzzle and he absolutely loved it.

In addition to these puzzles we introduced a couple nesting puzzles, a shape discrimination puzzle, and simple jigsaw puzzles. This chunky jigsaw puzzle was challenging and while he could do it it was not a favorite. He loved these matching puzzles though matching baby and mother animals. For my son who is loving matching, this was perfect!

Matching

That brings me to the next category: matching. Matching activities are a favorite around here. He started having interest around 18 months and he has continued to have a strong interest. We started with simple picture-to-object matching where the photo was plain and incredibly similar to the object. We then moved to more complex pictures and to picture-to-picture matching.

Generally, children understand the more tangible object (a figurine) before they understand a 2D picture representation. This is the reason for starting with matching a picture to an object (or two objects) instead of two pictures at once. We also moved to more complex pictures that were not exactly the same as the figure or as each other.

There are all sorts of activities for matching because you can choose figures or pictures that really match your child’s interest. Is your child interested in barnyard animals? Here you go! How about dinosaurs? Try these! Vehicles? Here! Our favorite brands for figurines are Schleich and Safari Ltd. For the photo representation, you can print out photos online. Alternatively, I have these animal flashcard decks and found they made it really easy for me to quickly create a new activity.

Once he was confidently matching I started having him do animal sorting. This was more challenging with multiple figurines to one visual representation rather than the one-to-one correspondence. I would put a basket with multiples of the same animal in the center and he would sort on trays.

Color Matching

The other sort of matching he worked a lot on these last few months was color matching. A note on color matching, as with all these activities, is children develop at their own pace. Many do not understand colors at this age. This progression though would apply whenever your child is beginning to understand colors.

At the beginning of this period, he could color match with one-to-one correspondence (so, for example, one ball to one pot). By the end, he was very confident with color sorting.

We started color matching with one-to-one correspondence and simple, primary colors. I then added in more colors. Once he was able to do all of them as one-to-one correspondence I introduced multiple objects color sorting. Here we worked with same objects (multiple little disks to one bowl). After he mastered that I introduced multiple different objects. For this I put down a few pieces of felt—colored paper would work too—and gathered random objects around the house matching these colors. He sorted these objects onto the felt. This takes a greater amount of understanding of colors than all same objects.

This was also one of our favorite more complex color sorting activities. This one is more complex since any mistake requires restarting, but my son has loved it. We also did some printables which is a great benefit of sorting and matching activities- they can be printed from online for cheap! We also did sorting that introduced tweezers he would pick up the object with. This is an opportunity to work on both color matching and fine motor work.

Fine Motor Work

The final category I am going to cover is our fine motor work these past few months. Fine motor work is an important part of early childhood education because it prepares the child’s hand for writing. Many of these activities already work on fine motor work as well! For example, puzzles with little knobs work on the pincer grasp which is important for writing.

So much of our fine motor work at this age for us happens in the kitchen with peeling, cutting, etc. However, we do have a few materials that focus on this. Dot stickers are a great one and many dot sticker activities are available online. You can also draw a line and they can place the dot stickers on the line or put up colored paper for them to sort the dot stickers.

This activity we actually got for his second birthday but it is a wonderful fine motor work for this age group. In the past he has loved threading which is also fantastic fine motor work. The tweezers I mentioned above are great for this.