Little P's Montessori Work - Art & other Fine Motor (18-30 months, 31 - 35 months)

Let’s talk about what is art and drawing to a toddler around 18 to 35 months old. We’ve been storing Little P’s art work done at home and also his Montessori work from school in this sort of clear file folder with transparent pockets (透明插页资料册).

40 months - Folder displaying Little P's latest paintings from Montessori school. I have no qualms folding them to fit in the folder because they came home folded anyway. HAHAHAHA! - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **40 months** – Folder displaying Little P’s latest paintings from Montessori school. I have no qualms folding them to fit in the folder because they came home folded anyway. HAHAHAHA!

But I also want to put down a sort of digital record of what he had been doing across the months on this blog because eventually he will fill up the folder. Then will come the time to declutter. So it just makes sense to digitise his work little by little now before it becomes too immense a project. That will just activate the procrastinator in me and I will end up becoming THE hoarder. So here I am diligently blogging Little P’s work. ;)

If you’re interested in what a pre-schooler may bring back from his Montessori school, read on. ;)

If you are the parent (of a young child) who just happened to come here, I hope you will find it helpful to you in some way. That said, every child is a unique person, so don’t take this as a record of what your child should or should not be doing. So… let’s get started.

Art Supplies for Babies and Young Toddlers

For the record, I didn’t really let Little P near Art supplies until he could reliably not put anything and everything into his mouth. But that doesn’t mean you need to do the same, there are parents who expose their children to painting early on using edible Yogurt coloured with baby-safe food dyes as a medium for example. It’s just that I didn’t bothered with that. :P

Check out baby-safe natural food dyes and colour on Amazon.

Here’s the set up we had when I was ready to deal with Little P and non-toxic paint. Haha. A thick plastic canvas tied to my balcony railing (pictured below on the left).

23 months - Left: Painting with Crayola washable finger paint when I am able to supervise. Right: Drawing on the Magnadoodle when I am not able to supervise 100% or when we are out and about. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **23 months** – Left: Painting with Crayola washable finger paint when I am able to supervise. Right: Drawing on the Fisher-Price magnetic doodle board when I am unable to supervise 100% or when we are out and about.

Read reviews of Travel-size Fisher Price Doodle Pro on Amazon

I was inspired by this particular IG post because of how sustainable it is. The kids painted on an acrylic or glass frame that can be cleaned and reused over and over again. If you’re child is an avid painter, so much paper saved!

There are other benefits to this set up. It is a vertical set up so they can stand and squat and work those leg muscles. And if the canvas is wide enough, it allows for cross lateral movement which is so important for crossing the midline.

Crossing the midline is vital to the development of using both sides of the body together, such as putting on shoes and socks, writing and cutting. It promotes the coordination and communication of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. It also encourages bilateral coordination, the process of developing a dominant hand and development of fine-motor skills.
CDC. (2018, January 24). What is crossing the midline and why is it important? Child Development Centre. Retrieved May 13, 2022.

For art supplies, this is the set of fingerpaint that I got for Little P at a friend’s recommendation, primarily because it is washable.

Buy Crayola Washable fingerpaint on Amazon.

For brushes, we got the Ikea MÅLA set of 6 brushes. But it’s ideal for young children to fingerpaint and experience the associated tactile exposure so brushes are not that necessary at this point.

Toddler Art Work (18 months – 30 months)

Now that we’ve covered the set up, you will understand why, I have only a few scant pieces of artwork to document for 18 – 30 months. LOL. All that painting activity was cleaned up!! No paper clutter!! Whoopee!! :P :P :P

So this below is one of his first few pieces of artwork. To be honest, he was so distracted by his environment I wouldn’t really say this is a piece of self-directed artwork by him at all. :P

Teaching-led process art created at music class (23 months old) — **23 months old** Teacher-led process art created at music class. The teacher incorporated quite a bit of arts and crafts in her music class. It’s just that I did not keep that many of them since he worked on them half-heartedly or not at all. :P

I would have to say his first fully-self directed piece of artwork was this digital art at 26 months.

26 months - "妈妈画画！妈妈画画！妈妈画画！"
("Mama draw! Mama draw! Mama draw!")
When I came out of the toilet, I found Little P had somehow managed to open up the notes app in my locked phone and made these orange scribbles with the pen.
He eventually scribbled over this printed copy with a pencil. Haha. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **26 months** – “妈妈画画！妈妈画画！妈妈画画！”
(“Mama draw! Mama draw! Mama draw!”)
When I came out of the toilet, I found Little P had somehow managed to open up the notes app in my locked phone and made these orange scribbles with the pen.
He eventually scribbled over this printed copy with a pencil. Haha.

29 months - helped paint the background for our Father's Day Banner. — **29 months** – helped paint the background for our Father’s Day Banner.

Toddler Art Work (30 months – 35 months)

I was very amused to watch Little P pretending to write his full name Chinese and English at around 30 months.

Little P pretends to write his full name at around 30 months. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **30 months** – Earnestly “writing” his name using crayon.

Toddler work from Play Group

Little P also started attending a Montessori school in the afternoons at 30 months of age. It was at this point that he started bringing his school work home on a weekly basis. And somewhere along I decided to keep them in my existing green folder with pockets.

For context, Little P attends a Montessori School with the three-hour work cycle in place. This means, the child gets to choose whatever work he wants to do during those three-hours he spends in school. There is no pre-determined activities or exercises he needs to fulfil. So Little P doesn’t bring any worksheets home, instead he brings home his own self-directed work like these drawings below.

Round squiggles and long squiggles at 30 months. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **30 months** – Round squiggles and long squiggles

30 months - Very light fine, strokes with pencil.- Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **30 months** – Very light fine, strokes with pencil.

Painting at 30 months. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **30 months** – Painting with clear strokes.

Toddler Painting

32 months - Paintings done in school. Colours are fairly bright.- toddler Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **32 months** – Paintings done in school. Colours are fairly bright.

33 months - Paintings done in school. Darker colours used, with perhaps a preference for blues, greens and reds, (or it could be these were the only colours provided at school lol) without overmixing them to create a brown sludge (which very often happens at 29-30 months.) - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **33 months** – Paintings done in school. Darker colours used, with perhaps a preference for blues, greens and reds, (or it could be these were the only colours provided at school lol) without overmixing them to create a brown sludge (which very often happens at 29-30 months.)

34 months - Very clear layering of distinct colours one over the other. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **34 months** – Very clear layering of distinct colours one over the other.

Toddler – Other fine motor work

Besides painting, Little P also worked on punching holes in paper and also glued bits of paper onto a larger piece of paper as pictured below. The school appeared to have provided the students with plenty of used paper that can be re-used for cutting, pasting, punching, etc. #ReuseReduceRecycle #SustainablePractices

“The hand is the instrument of intelligence. The child needs to manipulate objects and to gain experience by touching and handling. ”
Maria Montessori, The 1946 London Lectures

32 months - Little P being minimalist with 3 sqaures glued. Or he lost interest after that, who knows?- Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **32 months** – Little P being minimalist with 3 sqaures glued. Or he lost interest after that, who knows?

33 months - Paintings appeared to have been cut into squares which the kiddos then used for practising their gluing and pasting skills. Little P glued on more paper squares this time round. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **33 months** – Paintings appeared to have been cut into squares which the kiddos then used for practising their gluing and pasting skills. Little P glued on more paper squares this time round.

31-36 months - The work above had their original labelled dates removed from the folder, so I can only park them as created somewhere between 31 to 36 months. They include gluring big squares and smaller squares of paper and punching holes. And also there was one day when the teacher showed them how to fold penguins and another day they folded paper planes. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **31-36 months** – The work above had their original labelled dates removed from the folder, so I can only park them as created somewhere between 31 to 36 months. They include gluing big squares and smaller squares of paper and punching holes. And also there was one day when the teacher showed them how to fold penguins and another day they folded paper planes.

33 months - His work of folding penguins at school inspired me to provide him with a box of loose used paper for any open-ended work he might want to do with them. Here are some photos of the resulting work he did when he tried to instruct me in the art of folding a penguin out of paper. - Little P's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **33 months** – His work of folding penguins at school inspired me to provide him with a box of loose used paper for any open-ended work he might want to do with them. Here are some photos of the resulting work he did when he tried to instruct me in the art of folding a penguin out of paper.

Tracing using Metal Insets

The purpose of the Metal Insets is to prepare a child for handwriting, as this is the first material they will work with that has them use pencils to place controlled marks on paper…
The Montessori Metal Insets material is a set of 10 pink metal frames … 5 straight-lined shapes and one with 5 curved-line shapes.
Brons, S. (2022, January 10). Montessori metal insets: Purpose and presentation. The Montessori-Minded Mom. Retrieved May 13, 2022.

To get an idea of what the full set of metal insets look like and more about them, you can check out this page – Montessori Metal Inserts – Purpose and Presentation.

I have enquired with Little P’s school before and they replied that the metal inserts will help with handwriting in both Chinese and English.

Little P does have free access to his green folder of work that he did at home or brought home from school. So at one point, he determined that it was his work to cut out the shapes that he had drawn using the metal insets. That’s why you can no longer see his pencil tracings on these cut pieces of paper in the picture below.

33 months - Metal inset pencil tracings that have since been cut out. But you can roughly see what shapes he had been tracing - circle, triangle, rectangle and oval. - Toddler's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **33 months** – Metal inset pencil tracings that have since been cut out. But you can roughly see what shapes he had been tracing – circle, triangle, rectangle and oval.

34 months - On the left you can see an intact metal inset tracing Little P has done. It looks like he has traced over and over again with many different colours. You can also see on the left, corner that this work has not escaped his cutting obssession, it is just that he cut out the part with his name and the date rather than the shape itself. :P On the right is a cut out of the tracing of a similar shape. - - Toddler's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **34 months** – On the left you can see an intact metal inset tracing Little P has done. It looks like he has traced over and over again with many different colours. You can also see on the left corner that this work has not escaped his cutting obssession, it is just that he cut out the part with his name and the date rather than the shape itself. :P On the right is a cut out of the tracing of a similar shape.

At first his strokes are erratic and often extend beyond the outline. By degrees they become more accurate and uniform. Progress in muscular control can be noted by comparing the child’s designs from week to week and from year to year. Eventually he makes more intricate designs by superimposing two or three other shapes on the original figure…
… Although work with metal insets gives the child an opportunity to experiment with colour and design, it is not considered creative art. Crayons and paints are not used for this activity because the purpose is always pencil control.
Wolf, A. D. (2009). The Metal Insets. In A parents’ guide to the montessori classroom (pp. 32–33). essay, Parent Child Press.

This blog post – What are the Montessori Metal Insets – has pictures that show the progression of Metal Insets work (as described in the quote above). In this way, we can roughly have a context for understanding Little P’s work with the metal insets so far, and what we can possibly expect to see from him in the future months and years.

Drawing and Colouring with Coloured Pencils at Home

Meanwhile at home Little P also loves using coloured pencils. The difference at home is that he gets free rein to his imagination with his random pencil art work.

33 months - It is sometimes such a treat to just sit and listen to your toddler babble on about what he is drawing while he draws. Without the running commentary, I would not have guess that there was all that thought behind all his squiggles!!- - Toddler's Montessori Work (18-36 months) — **33 months** – It is sometimes such a treat to just sit and listen to your toddler babble on about what he is drawing while he draws. Without the running commentary, I would not have guess that there was all that thought behind all his squiggles!!

In my research and also through conversation with his school teachers, toddlers should use fat pencils. But since I didn’t really find fat pencils for him to use, I found a second alternative which was reusing really short, used pencils left over from my secondary school days (#hoarderalert!!). Apparently the shortest pencils help them to perfect their grip better than the long thin ones. Of course if you can find fat pencils, those are the best. Don’t forget to get a mini rotary pencil sharpener. That was really fun for Little P too. :P

That’s all for our review of Little P’s Montessori Work – Art & other Fine Motor (18-30 months, 31 – 35 months). It’s by no means comprehensive but when you’re mothering a young child, there is really not much time to indulge in former perfectionist tendencies so I will end here. Till next time.