Are you buying gifts for any littles this year? My little guy isn’t quite old enough to help much in the kitchen, but cooking projects and food preparation work were some of my favorite things to watch the children work on when I was teaching in a Montessori school.
Helping in the kitchen is great for concentration and fine motor skills, and can also help kids get excited about eating different kinds of foods.
If you have a little one on your Christmas list, here are some fun kitchen tool ideas, perfect for tiny hands. These are generally appropriate for 3-5 year olds, but of course watch your own child for readiness.
Wavy Chopper This lets children as young as three help chop things like carrots or cucumbers.
Mini Pizza Pans How fun would these be for family pizza nights?
Egg Slicer
Banana Slicer This is definitely not a kitchen essential, but can be fun if you have a child who regularly eats bananas. After they slice them, they can spread them with nut butter using their own little spreader – there are tons of fun ones
Mini Potato Masher This is perfect for helping with the mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes for holiday dinners, but it would also work well for making guacamole.
Cherry Pitter This was one of the most beloved food prep works in the class where I taught.
Apple Slicer Some little ones do not yet have the muscle strength to use this on their own yet, but older four year olds or five year olds are often successful with it.
Egg Beater This would be fun for letting your child help with holiday baking. Handheld mixers like this can also be used for bubble making – all you need is a mixing bowl, water, and a few drops of dish soap.
Spice Grinder
Mini Grater These little graters are great for letting your little one help with taco night.
I always love the For Small Hands site for kids’ kitchen tools (and so many other things…) as well.
Do you do stockings in your family?
They’re one of my favorite parts of Christmas!
*Please note this post contains affiliate links – I get a small percentage if items are purchased, at no cost to you. I only include items I love. Thanks for your support!
– I love music boxes for children and this one is very sturdy. I also love 
for slightly older children.
, a homemade shaker filled with dried chickpeas, and this 
(love this brand).
. He has loved taking these apart and holding the little egg for months, but I just put them back on his shelf given his current interest in putting things together.
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my mom gave James for his birthday. We have the bead maze part of the toy in another part of the room and it is super cute too, but James especially loves this stacking puzzle.
, a 
, and a really cute butterfly ball we got at our local wildflower center.
– This is one we just got recently and it’s super cute. There are springs under the four pegs, so they bounce when you tap them and will pop out if you hit them hard enough. James also likes just taking them out and trying to put them back in.
and filled each with something with a strong smell. I used fresh ginger, lemon peel, fresh rosemary, and coffee beans. James likes to hand me a bottle to smell, and then smell it himself. I love watching him sniff with his little nose, it is so cute! (idea from this 
. He actually hasn’t been using this as much lately so I need to find something to replace it, but for a while taking the rings out of the jar and putting them back in was one of his absolute favorite things to do.
and put several interesting bracelets on it. James loved the rainbow stacker, but was beginning to lose interest, so I switched out the rings with bracelets to mix it up and spark his interest again.
– James has shown some interest in the puzzle, but so far he only removes the pieces, he does not try to replace them.
– My friend Natalie gave this to James for his birthday and it is SO cute! He loves examining the little animals and putting them back in the truck.
– I’ve mentioned these before, but we are still loving them. I have these on the window sill right now because they look so pretty with the light coming through.
– I’ve also just started keeping this on the window sill because James is teething and loves to chew on the window sill. To try to deter this, I have the teether right there for him.
– We don’t keep a ton of toys in the living room, but we do have a set of zoo animal Duplos tucked away and James loves playing with them. He hasn’t yet figured out how to put them together, but he loves taking them apart and putting them back in the bucket. This is extra fun because my husband’s parents sent the set that belonged to him as a kid.
*on Amazon. It is listed as a closet organizer, but is working really well for this relatively small room.
for his reading nook. I wanted something literary themed, and while I know some prefer to not include any children’s books with unrealistic talking animals, I like to make an exception for the classics because they are so wonderfully written and such good stories. I have a very old copy of Winnie the Pooh that belonged to my grandmother and can’t wait to read it to him some day. I also liked the simplicity of the image.
– it comes with a fold out of all of the images and I simply cut out a few that he seemed to enjoy from the book. He sometimes sticks his whole head in the cube to get a better look and touch the picture.
