Let’s Make Some Montessori Baby Rattles!
Don’t you just love Fall?! The leaves start turning different rich colors, pumpkin patches start appearing around town, and the air starts to cool down!! Well, one of the things that I love about this time of year is that gourds are in season! Which for me means an entire new set of all-natural Montessori baby rattles and instruments!
Before we dive into how to cure the gourds into baby rattles and forever keepsakes, let’s talk about what exactly baby rattles do for an infant’s development.
Now that we have been journeying further into the world of babies, we can now recognize that infants are constantly making connections about their world!
Giving a young baby a rattle or shaker gives them an opportunity to recognize that they can “transform their environment.” For example, when they shake the rattle and it makes a noise, they make that mental connection that they did that!
Now here is the good news about curing a gourd to make a rattle…
It takes almost no effort! Here are the steps to making your own gourd rattles:
- Buy or grow your gourds! I get mine from Trader Joes in the Fall. 🙂
- Clean them! I use soapy water, rinse, and finish with rubbing alcohol on a cotton pad. Then I dry them with a cloth.
- Dry them out! Put them on a wooden or paper tray and store them in a place that has air flow and is dry. I stored mine on top of the fridge!
- Check them after a week or two to make sure the skin is drying out. Then you just have to leave them alone!
If you’re looking for great wooden trays to place the gourds, I linked the ones that I use here!
Drying out these rattles will take time…
It is going to take about 6 months or so to cure the gourds properly… but it will be well worth it! After the 6 months, pick one up and shake it. You should be able to hear the seeds shaking inside! And bam! You have your baby rattles and instruments!
You will have a forever keepsake! My infants absolutely loved when I would put out the basket of gourd rattles during fall!! And I still have them…
Plus, I felt so good knowing I gave them a toy directly from Mother Nature herself! It doesn’t get more all-natural than that!
And here’s a fun idea to start a new family tradition and create some beautiful memories! Each year as your child grows, you can have them paint a cured gourd in the Fall! It will make a beautiful keepsake for the entire family… Perhaps even designate a family cornucopia or basket to fill with the painted gourds. That way you can put it out with your yearly fall decorations! 🙂
Let me know how your baby gourd rattles and instruments turn out in the comments below! Have fun with it!
Xoxo,
Bianca, Your Baby Tour Guide