Fallen Leaves: Montessori Glue Box Fall Activity

The Montessori glue box is a staple in montessori education and a fantastic montessori at home activity working fine motor skills, concentration, and more! “Fallen Leaves” combines the montessori glue and paste box with a fun fall theme working tons of skills to create an engaging toddler and preschooler activity!

My daughter fell in LOVE with gluing activities after we received this glue and paste set from our Lovevery play kit.

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What is a montessori glue box?

A Montessori glue and paste box is typically a wooden box with several compartments for different pieces, a glass jar for the paste, and a brush to apply the glue onto the pieces and then paste onto the project.

It's easily one of my 2 year olds favorite things to do! So I knew it'd make the perfect fall activity!

NOTE: You do NOT need a formal montessori glue box for this fall toddler activity! I did not use one, since we had something similar from Lovevery already, but you certainly can get one as you will likely get a ton of use out of it like we do from our Lovevery one!

Supplies:

• Montessori Glue Box (similar option comes in “The Enthusiast” play kit from Lovevery)
• Alternative: Glue, Stiff paint brush or glue brush, Small jar
• Fall leaves
• Picture of barren tree (download here!)

Start by collecting your leaves

Get outside with your child and have them collect some fall leaves! For this activity flatter leaves do work better, however let them collect all the leaves they like and we can use some of the more curved ones for other fall activities in this list!

Next, prep your activity

Print out your tree and set it aside. Pour a little glue into the small jar.

Give your toddler the printed tree, jar of glue with the brush, and the leaves you collected.

Model + Customize

Depending on the age of your child, this will look different.

For my 2 year old, I modeled how I dipped the brush into the glue, added it to the back of a leaf, then pasted onto the empty tree branches.

I noticed flat leaves worked better for her at a young age, so I pulled out just a handful of those since she was primarily working on the gluing skill. As she gets older and has the current information more organized, I'd leave out the more twisty leaves. But at this stage for her, she was getting frustrated/discouraged when the curled up leaves weren't sticking to the page.

For older kids, you can write letters or numbers on the leaves, and then the corresponding letters or numbers on the branches and let them match the leaf to the appropriate branch.

Set up + Clean up time:

This took about 3 minutes to set up and 2 minutes to clean up! I let my toddler wipe down the glue off the counter and rinse the brush and glass jar clean.

How my toddler liked this activity:

She absolutely loved it! I was inspired by her passion for the Lovevery gluing set from this play kit and knew she'd have a blast with this too.

Like I mentioned, at 2 years old she did get a little frustrated with some of the “curlier” leaves that didn't lay flat, I tried modeling them for her but ultimately just removed them so this activity fostered more independence. She really enjoyed it though and it worked fine motor skills, concentration, sorting and organizing, problem solving, and many more skills I'm sure!