DIY Montessori toys for 6-month-old babies
Montessori ring Rattle
Age group: 4-6 months
Purpose: To learn how to grasp the rattle and to develop fine motor coordination.
How to make this DIY:
A wooden curtain ring, bells, and super glue can be used to make a DIY Montessori toy ring rattle.
Montessori Interlocking discs
Age group: 4 months and older
Purpose: Encourages hand-to-hand transfer and large motor coordination through movement.
How to make this DIY:
Montessori interlocking discs can be made DIY by using two circular pieces of beechwood that can lock together at a 90-degree angle. For an easy DIY alternative, the disks can also be made out of cardboard.
Bell cylinder toy
Age group: 5-6 months
Purpose: Encourages hand-to-hand transfer and large motor development of the upper body during tummy time.
How to make this DIY:
You can make a bell rattle DIY by using two recycled jar lids, super glue, several duo sticks, and a bell to put inside. This homemade DIY bell rattle can work as well as a store-bought rattle, and you can paint and decorate it as an art project as well.
DIY Montessori toys for 8-month-old babies
Montessori wooden stacking toy
Age group: 8 months
Purpose: To boost fine and gross motor coordination, and to develop hand-eye-coordination.
How to make this DIY:
This Montessori toy can easily be made DIY by using a paper towel holder and curtain rings of various sizes. Cern stackers can be made using colorful rocks that are easily stackable.
Montessori Spinning drum
Age group: 7-8 months
Purpose: To strengthen the movement of the wrist and arm, for visual tracking and hand-eye coordination.
How to make this DIY:
To make this DIY Montessori toy, you need two circle pieces of cardboard, and eight rectangular pieces to build the drum. Then the drum can be glued together with superglue. After this, it can be decorated with color paper. The frame can be made with foil tubes and a rectangle of cardboard.
A drum
Age group: 7-8 months
Purpose: To develop wrist and hand strength as well as gross motor strength in the arms.
How to make this DIY:
A drum is an easy DIY Montessori toy to make. It can be made from a recycled coffee tin that can be decorated with paper and paint.
Egg-in-a-cup
Age group: 7-8 months
Purpose: Develop movement, cognitive growth, concentration and focus while learning how to fit the egg.
How to make this DIY:
As an easy DIY alternative, you can use an eggshell to make a mold for a paper mache egg and an egg cup for the paper mache egg to fit into.
Xylophone
Age group: 7 months and older
Purpose: To develop rhythm, an ear for music and to learn cause-and-effect making music.
How to make this DIY:
Make two paper rolls for xylophone stick base frames by rolling them up against a pencil and then taping them up. Then for the xylophone, roll 6 tubes of colored paper up against a glue stick and also tape them up. Then cut the rolls to descend in shortness in a linear order. Then tie some string around each of the xylophone tube ends. Tie the remaining string from the tube ends to the xylophone stick tubes in order to create a secure frame. This can then be played with a pen, a pencil, or a stick.
Pop-up toys
Age group: 7-8 months
Purpose: Develop fine motor coordination, hand-eye coordination and cause-and-effect through the duo pop-ups.
How to make this DIY:
An easy DIY pop-up toy can be made out of a paper cup, some stuffing, googly eyes, rubber bands, a pen with a point, a marker, scissors, socks, and a duo stick. You place the duo stick in the sock end with hot glue. You can then make ears or a nose by bunching some sock and wrapping it with a rubber band. After this, the sock’s head is stuffed and sealed with a rubber band a couple of times to secure the neck. Lastly, the eyes are secured with glue onto the sock and any other felt or pen decorations. Arms can also then be made like ears. Then poke a hole in the bottom of the cup and slide the bottom of the duo inside the cup and through. Then glue the bottom of the sock around the edges of the cup. So you can pop down and up the sock toy with the duo stick.
DIY Montessori toys for 9-month-old babies
Object permanence drawer box
Age group: 9-10 months
Purpose: Develop hand-eye coordination, cognitive development, and fine motor coordination.
How to make this DIY:
You can make this easy DIY Montessori toy using a shoe box. Use the top of the shoe box as a base and half the top of the shoe box as the top. Add a frame and some cardboard blockers for the corners of the box. Put some cardboard squares on the bottom of the back of the box to give it a rolling angle. Then your baby can use a ping pong ball to practice the object permanence DIY Montessori toy activity.
Montessori cube-in-a-box
Age group: 8-9 months
Purpose: To develop hand-eye coordination, focus and concentration, sensory learning, and spatial reasoning through visual discernment.
How to make this DIY:
You can make a DIY paper cube using a dice pattern to make the cube. Then make the box out of cardboard using the dice pattern but leaving out the top.
A matryoshka doll
Age group: 9-10 months
Purpose: To develop powers of spatial reasoning, fine motor coordination and hand-eye coordination.
How to make this DIY:
You can make a paper mache matryoshka doll by baking salt dough moulds for the smaller and smaller dolls and then creating the top and bottom parts. You can make the parts connectable with double-sided tape.
The bottom line
Homemade Montessori toys are fun, possible, and more affordable to make than buying store-bought toys. The information in this article is to give you an introduction to the world of DIY Montessori toys for babies under 9 months old. While not all DIY toys last for long, they are more beneficial for temporary and homemade use.
