Summary
Childhood is decisive for good development and a fulfilled adult life. Our little ones discover the environment that surrounds them as they go along and develop their knowledge to prepare themselves for the world of the big boys. We have already told you about children’s puzzles, small recreational, playful and stimulating games, which promote the logical development of children. To accompany children in their learning and their discovery of the world, the Montessori method sets up many creative activities.
🏆The best games of the moment
Best Montessori games: our favorites
Created by Maria Montessori at the beginning of the 20th century, this approach has developed worldwide to rethink child development. Montessori pedagogy relies largely on the senses to promote awakening, self-confidence and autonomy.
Montessori’s goal is to unleash children’s potential through sensory experiences rather than through the accumulation of knowledge to develop our toddlers’ fine motor skills.
Increasingly widespread in day-care centres and schools in France, the educational games and teaching materials of this method are part of many children’s daily lives. You can also set up Montessori activities at home. There are many fun games of this pedagogy on the market, so that your little ones can continue to learn while having fun at home.
To help you in your purchases of educational toys adapted to your children, we have made a top 10 of the best Montessori games to find the best value for money for 2 and 3 year olds, thanks to our testers and their opinions!
Best Montessori game for 2-3 years old: our TOP 10
Here is our selection of Montessori games for toddlers among the most popular on the market. We have compared the different workshops to help you choose the model that will best suit your little one.
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Set of nails
Thanks to their little hands and their overflowing imagination, your little loulous will bring these little pieces of wood to life without limits! With the 2 miniature hammers and no less than 243 pieces, your little cherubs will be able to create endless shapes and animals. Ideal for 3 year olds, this nail game promotes dexterity and control of strength in the hands, with the aim of preparing them for writing. This small cork board will become the masterpieces of your cherubs, the result of their creativity, while having fun.
This Montessori activity can be suitable for children as young as 2 years old, who will have great fun pounding nails without the risk of getting hurt. However, be careful to be close to them and watch out for them, since nails and some parts are small, you have to make sure that your toddlers don’t swallow them. Thanks to the 2 hammers, you will be able to watch them while having fun and improve their motor skills!
Discover the nail game on Amazon
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Musical bells
These small Montessori bells with their clear and soft sound will awaken your children to music, rhythm and ear in all simplicity. Of all colours, the bells are numbered from 1 to 8, and are accompanied by simple “scores”, which give the order to ring the notes to obtain rhymes. Your little musicians will develop both their reading and musical sense. The little ones will happily wiggle their bells to invent their own melodies and develop their artistic sensibility. Your music lovers will be delighted to play you their musical creations, in which you can participate as a family!
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I feel…
This Montessori olfactory game will quickly interest your offspring, stimulating their sense of smell with delicious flavours of Italian ice cream. This gourmet activity will require him to refine his sensory perceptions, with simple rules of the game: 16 scoops of ice cream flavoured with 4 different flavours, your toddler will have to make ice cream cups with the 4 identical flavours! For your 2 year old cherubs, this game will allow them to develop their sense of smell and awaken their nostrils with sweet and sweet smells. Guided by chocolate, strawberry, vanilla and mint, your little ones will have fun while developing their senses with a fun and educational activity.
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Colour box
This pretty wooden box contains 11 pairs of coloured shelves: red, yellow, blue, orange, green, purple, brown, pink, grey, black and white. Good size and easy to hold, these colourful pieces of wood help familiarize your little cabbages with the colours and teach them to recognize them to form pairs again. Guided by you at the beginning, they will then be able to combine the wooden pieces like dominoes to bring the colours together. These Montessori tools educate your cherub’s eye and hand, and develop observation skills from an early age. The sense of touch is also stimulated with the contact of their little hands with the wood of the boards. Children will be able to manipulate them to become aware of the relief between the flat pieces of wood and the larger edges.
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I observe
Your little sweetie pie will have to show observation, concentration, and geometry in space to succeed in re-forming frozen Eskimos using 5 pieces. This educational game encourages concentration and analysis of the elements present in order to succeed in reconstructing shapes following a model. Adapted for children of 2 years old, this Montessori pedagogy develops visual perceptions with different forms of attractive colours, while stimulating their fine motor skills. In total, your toddler will be able to re-form 4 Eskimos using 20 different pieces. It’s up to him to sort and find the right pieces for each cone!
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I’m touching
Always with educational and gourmet activities, now it’s the turn of touch to be stimulated and developed, by associating pieces with the same texture. With 12 different shapes with different reliefs, your toddler will have to touch them and combine the cone and ice cream, which have the same texture, to form 6 complete ice creams! More adapted to 3-year-old cherubs, this Montessori activity will develop their tactile perception. The different textures are not always easy to identify! It will take a lot of handling and concentration for your offspring to match the right parts. We recommend that you accompany him at the beginning to help him in his exercise.
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Balthazar’s Montessori picture book
This richly illustrated book is perfect to accompany your toddlers from the age of 2 in their discovery of the world and their first words. With many themes that will interest toddlers and adults alike, awaken your little ones with an album to share and discover with the family to encourage them to learn new words. Pleasant to handle and soft to the touch, even the little ones will be delighted to hold it and observe the pretty drawings, before they start learning to read or speak. Colourful and strong enough, your children will be able to understand and discover their environment quickly.
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Hammering Xylophone
This colourful wooden toy is very popular with toddlers. The classic Montessori workshop hammering xylophone allows children to develop their motor skills while stimulating their senses of hearing and sight. Using a hammer, the child can drop the balls on the musical instrument to bring out 8 different notes. This colourful toy develops the ear and musical sensitivity of your cherubs, while teaching them colour and hand-eye coordination. The icing on the cake, this game is divided in two: the xylophone can slide to be used on its own! For a gentle musical awakening, your musician can therefore express his or her talent by making the balls resound on the keyboard, or by tapping them directly with the hammer.
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Mosaic board
Composed of 5 boards and 120 geometric shapes, this Montessori activity encourages motor skills, patience and observation of your offspring. The boards show models of animals, transport, nature, to be filled with coloured shapes. Playful for young and old, the aim is to stimulate their representation in space and the association of forms. Through the manipulation and analysis of shapes, this educational mosaic also helps to develop problem solving by following a construction model.
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Montessori Touch Shapes
This box for the little ones teaches them to recognize and differentiate basic shapes. With 5 rough cards, your toddlers will be able to follow the outline of the shapes with their little hands to get used to and familiarize themselves with geometry. Once he has mastered them, he can then move on to the next step: classifying objects according to their shape. Through 25 cards representing images that your cherub knows (the sun, an orange, a pointed hat, etc.), he will have to sort and classify them to form piles of objects with the same shape. A Montessori game that stimulates both the sense of touch with relief maps, and develops recognition and geometry in space with objects from the world around it.
What is the Montessori method?
The principle of this learning method is to value the child’s mind, and its development from all angles: physical, social, emotional, cognitive. Teachers and carers see children as actors in their own construction and consider each child as a unique individual, with his or her own functioning and pace of learning. Montessori pedagogy observes the needs and abilities of the child, and adapts to all learning styles to ensure that each little one develops well.
Montessori workshops consist of encouraging children to work with materials that develop their psychomotricity and learning through direct experience: seeing, moving, touching, feeling, tasting, hearing.
Empowering children
To enrol them in an environment of knowledge sharing and respect, the students live in a community, and are brought together in multi-age classrooms (over 3 years), to bring about a sharing of skills, and create a strong link between the ages built on mutual aid. The Montessori method is based on participatory education where students have a say in the direction of their learning, and can choose their activities according to their interests.
Preparing tomorrow’s adults
The goal is to prepare toddlers for the future and the society around them by forging a way of thinking based on their knowledge, which they can then apply to the real world.
Play activities stimulate the child’s curiosity and interest in joyful learning. Based on a high degree of autonomy, children are pushed towards the discovery of the world, and encouraged to become active seekers of answers to their questions.
The benefits of this education
Montessori education has many benefits for the well-being and healthy development of your little ones.
Children use their environment to develop and progress. As masters of their own learning, teachers are there only to guide and direct each child in their construction. Surrounded by the specific Montessori equipment, the cherubs learn how to manage on their own, in a “Help me to do alone” approach. This pedagogy allows children to evolve at their own pace, with fun activities and sensory experiences adapted to each child.
Characterized by a freer teaching, the Montessori method encourages independence and freedom of action, while setting a framework not to be crossed. This freedom promotes understanding of actions and consequences for our little ones, who face more responsibility. This practice thus develops order, concentration, independence and learning based on a pedagogical and positive education.
The establishment of multi-age classes is an essential asset for the transmission of knowledge between ages: the little ones learn from the older ones, who reinforce their knowledge by teaching the younger ones. This mutual support is beneficial and enhances children’s social experiences, focusing on sharing and respect for others.
Framed in a motor and sensory universe, the principles of self-correction and self-evaluation are put in place to help children develop a critical sense, learning to step back to correct their mistakes and learn from them to improve.
The Montessori method awakens and stimulates the cherubs to become prepared and capable of working in a team, with good self-confidence and a capacity for analysis and criticism, qualities that are indispensable in our society.
Montessori Workshops
In order to conduct Montessori workshops, it is necessary to have an environment conducive to motor skills and awakening. The aim of the activities is to stimulate the sensory and motor skills of the children, working with various materials to activate the sensitivity of young and old, and develop their cognitive reference points.
Montessori games can take various forms, to be adapted according to each child’s age, interests, learning potential and psychomotor skills. To engage motor skills, movement and dexterity, there are multiple sensory experiences, where your toddler will have to manipulate, stack, observe, analyze, listen, reconstruct, smell… The Montessori training provides solid teaching tools to awaken and interest your toddlers, instilling real knowledge through games of reflection: learning to count, to read, to observe to understand the world around us.
Best Montessori games for 2 and 3 year olds: why trust us?
Thank you for reading this article! Because we know that it is not always easy to make the best choice without trying, each of our recommendations is the result of a long work of analysis of consumer opinions on flagship and little-known products on the market, of comparison of prices and technical characteristics, but also and above all of tests by a team of men and women constantly renewed in order to keep a real objectivity to help you in your purchasing process.
All the purchasing criteria are scrutinized for the realization of our comparative guides: budget, level of range, functional and practical aspects, design, pack and accessories, safety… All this in order to help you choose the products best suited to your needs, desires and constraints on a daily basis, at the best price!
