Montessori-Inspired Practical Life Baking Tray

I finally got a chance to clean up our preschool cabinet and decided it was once again time to change up some of our Montessori-inspired tray activities.  I wanted to create a tray based on something that would be very useful during the upcoming holiday season, and one of things I'll be doing most over the next couple months is baking!

I took a small 12 cup mini muffin pan, a small pot holder, 12 mini paper baking cups, and 12 cotton balls (for the batter), and created a practical life cupcake baking lesson.  The kids are already obsessed with it!  They place a paper baking cup in each slot, then the "batter" into each baking cup.  Then they pop it into the oven, not the real oven though.  The piano bench has been dubbed the oven just for this activity.  Leave it to the minds of toddlers to get so creative!  They wait a few minutes, excitedly waiting for their cupcakes to bake, and then carefully pull out the pan using the potholder!

We even get to pretend eat them, and then put everything back before starting over!  With this much fun, this tray might stick around for a long time!