Disney Inspired Tot Trays

Sadly I have been in a rut the last few months and this rut has given me a terrible bout of writer's block.  I haven't been able to write much of anything and therefore my poor blog has sat here untouched for months.  Well with a family vacation on the horizon I am back in the mood to write.

It all started a few days ago when we moved our Disneyland vacation up a couple weeks and booked a hotel.  Sadly Travelocity has been on my speed dial and their customer service reps have been my frienemies for 3 days now.  Long story short, I wont be traveling with them again.

In an effort to infuse more excitement into the house about our trip...or lets just call it what it is- I am so excited that all I want to do is anything involving Disneyland for the next 21 days.  Well yesterday when it was learning time, I was not in to mood, so to satisfy my Disneymania I designed some new tot trays for myself, uh, er, i mean for the girls.

This actually worked out perfectly because they were getting really bored of their old trays and it was time for an upgrade anyway.

Scooping fairy ice skate, these are actually from a set of Pixie Hollow dolls Monkey got for her birthday

****Disclaimer time, I am not trained in anyway in the teaching art of Montessori.  I've read a few blogs (Like This Blog) and have taken a few tidbits here and there for my 2 and 3 year old daughters because I have found that is the easiest way to get them excited to learn.  I spent a good 3 months shoving flash cards, workbooks and structured pre-school curriculum down their throats. They were miserable, I was miserable and so I gave up and decided to look further into Montessori options.  I haven't purchased a full program but I take bits and pieces from books and blogs to create trays, using materials from the dollar store, that teach and challenge them.  Now they ask everyday to "play school".****

This is how I came up with the Disney trays...  I looked at some blogs found 6-8 tray ideas and just made them Disney themed. That's all there is to it.  I made a few that were very simple for Madi, like putting Disney character skews into holes in a canister:

And for Zoe I created more challenging trays like letter matching and dressing a princess Tiana Barbie:

The princess pattern matching tray is actually the most popular and the girls fight over who gets to use this one first so I guess that I need to make more trays with these super cute and very artistic versions of the Disney princesses.

I've learned in the last 9 months that it is super simple to make these trays for very cheap. All of the things that I use (including the trays themselves) have been gathered from the dollar store or printed from pictures I found online.  If you want to create your own trays for learning or just for fun (my kids love them and have lots of fun) check out a few blogs and let your imagination do the rest.

Happy Learning,