12 Best Montessori Play Kitchens 2023
My niece has a beautiful Montessori play kitchen that she loves. When we bring my kids over to see her, they love playing with one too. It’s something my daughter will be getting for Christmas, and I know my sons will love playing with it too. Between Montessori food toys, food accessories, and play kitchens, my children love playing with food. It has helped them enjoy cooking with my wife and I too. We have made homemade pizzas, cookies, pancakes, brownies, and more with our kids. It’s a great experience and playing with a toy kitchen and food toys helps them enjoy it more.
Top 3 Montessori Play Kitchens
This wooden play kitchen, with realistic features like clicking knobs, is a perfect gift that boosts creativity, fine motor skills, dexterity, and enhances kids' social and language skills through imaginative role-playing.
This adjustable eco-friendly wooden play kitchen, ideal for ages 3-7, offers a range of accessories, realistic appliances with sound and light, and prioritizes safety for endless fun.
This durable solid wood play kitchen encourages imaginative role-playing, improves hands-on and social skills, and, complete with realistic cookware, serves as an ideal gift that fosters both fun and parent-child bonding.
A Montessori play kitchen is a popular toy for Montessori classrooms and homes. Montessori play kitchens allow children to engage in pretend play while also developing vital life skills. In this comprehensive guide, we will cover everything you need to know about Montessori play kitchens.
What is a Montessori Play Kitchen?
A Montessori play kitchen is a child-sized wooden kitchen setup. It features cabinets, a stove, a sink, and kitchen accessories. The kitchen is made from natural materials like wood, metal, and cloth. This allows children to safely engage with realistic household items.
Montessori play kitchens encourage imaginative play. Children can pretend to chop foods, cook meals, and wash dishes. This type of pretend play allows them to imitate and learn real-life skills. Montessori kitchens also promote independent play. Children can choose activities and control their environment.
12 Montessori Play Kitchens We Love
1. ROBUD Wooden Play Kitchen Set
This wooden play kitchen boosts creativity and fine motor skills, offering realistic features like knobs that click, perfect for kids to immerse in imaginative role-playing. A great gift, it not only promotes dexterity and hand-eye coordination but also enhances social skills and language expression through play.
2. Tiny Land Wooden Play Kitchen for Kids
This eco-friendly wooden play kitchen, suitable for ages 3-7, comes fully equipped with accessories, sound and light features, and an adjustable height setting to grow with your child. Not only does it provide endless fun with its realistic oven, refrigerator, and microwave, but it also prioritizes safety.
3. ROBUD Kids & Toddlers Kitchen Playset
This solid wood play kitchen offers a durable and smooth surface, ideal for kids to dive into imaginative role-playing as little chefs, enhancing their hands-on skills and social interactions. Suitable as a gift for both boys and girls, it comes with realistic cookware, ensuring endless fun and promoting friendships and parent-child bonding during play.
4. KidKraft Wooden Farm to Table Play Kitchen
This wooden play kitchen offers a unique garden-to-plate experience, featuring planters with vegetables that kids can “plant” in the “dirt” and even label with a chalkboard. Along with realistic sounds and lights from the faucet and cooktop, children can enjoy slicing wooden veggies with crisp sounds, and using a play ice maker that dispenses cubes.
5. Teamson Kids Little Chef Paris Modular Play Kitchen
This contemporary-styled play kitchen, with a sleek white finish and rose gold fixtures, offers a realistic cooking experience with interactive features like turning faucet handles and clicking oven knobs. With a modular design for flexible arrangement and ample storage in the oven, under the sink, and refrigerator, it ensures a tidy play space and is durably constructed for long-lasting use.
6. ROBOTIME Play Kitchen with Pretend Ice Cube Dispenser
This realistic play kitchen offers children a safe cooking experience with features like a stove, sink, and sound-producing knobs, complete with kitchen accessories.
7. BRINJOY Corner Play Kitchen for Kids
This pretend play kitchen offers a lifelike cooking experience with sound, light, and comprehensive kitchen supplies, while its unique corner design provides ample storage and allows for group play. Made with durable, kid-friendly materials and suitable for children aged 3 and up, it’s a thoughtful gift that enhances creativity, coordination, and logical thinking.
8. ROBOTIME Kids Rustic Play Kitchen Set
This rustic-style wooden play kitchen offers interactive features like turning knobs and opening doors for a realistic cooking experience and comes with unique accessories like a leaf light string and apron.
9. KidKraft Ultimate Corner Wooden Play Kitchen
This durable wooden play kitchen boasts a unique curved design to fit snugly in any room corner, featuring realistic lights and sounds for burners and water dispensers, and even a built-in washer.
10. Pretend Wooden Toddler Kitchen Toy Set
This interactive play kitchen immerses children in a lifelike cooking experience, complete with realistic lighting, sound effects, and features such as a water dispenser and ample storage.
11. INFANS Kid Kitchen Playset
This wooden kitchen playset offers children a genuine cooking experience with features like a sound-simulating water fountain and gas stove, ideal for kids aged 3 and up. Not only does it foster creativity and skill development, but it’s also made of durable, safe materials that meet high-quality standards, ensuring long-lasting and safe playtime.
12. Tiny Land Play Kitchen for Kids
This award-winning play kitchen is ideal for preschoolers, enhancing their development through imaginative play with features like an ice maker, coffee maker, microwave, and more.
What Age Is a Montessori Play Kitchen For?
Montessori play kitchens are suitable for children ages 2 to 6 years old. Around 2, children have the motor skills to start engaging with a play kitchen. Pouring, scooping, and pretending to cook become fun activities. Kids will develop these skills if they start using a play kitchen earlier.
Between 3 and 6 years old, pretend play expands. Kids enjoy more complex roles like acting out a restaurant or grocery store. A Montessori kitchen engages their imagination and growing independence. Open-ended play materials keep them interested for hours.
Benefits of Montessori Play Kitchens
There are many developmental benefits of using a Montessori play kitchen:
- Life skills – Children learn how to pour, stir, scrub, open/close containers, and more. These motions build real-life skills.
- Independence – Kids choose their own activities as they would in a real kitchen. This independence is empowering.
- Creativity – Imaginative play sparks creativity as children invent recipes and roles. Storytelling skills grow too.
- Collaboration – Kitchens promote collaborative play as kids work together to create meals.
- Sensory development – Various textures and resistances from accessories build tactile skills.
- Language – Kitchen play provides opportunities for language-rich conversations about cooking.
- Problem-solving – Setting the table, planning a meal, and dividing up roles requires critical thinking.
- Confidence – Mastering new kitchen skills helps children feel capable and proud.
Tips For Making The Most of a Montessori Play Kitchen
Here are some tips for successfully using a Montessori kitchen in your classroom or home:
- Open Space: Set up the kitchen in an inviting, child-sized space. Place it near an open floor space so children can move freely.
- Keep Kitchen Toys Fresh: Rotate toys and accessories to keep the kitchen novel. Storing some pieces out of sight maintains interest over time.
- Make Pretend Cooking Feel Real: Model real cooking activities. Let children participate in safe ways to make the connection between real and pretend.
- Independent Play: Allow freedom of choice. Let kids take the lead in deciding how to use the kitchen and what to cook. Observe their play but don’t interrupt unnecessarily. Allow children space to follow their imaginations.
- Ask Questions: Ask open-ended questions to extend their thinking. “What ingredients are you adding?” “Who are you cooking for?”
- Pretend To Be Customers: Occasionally add some drama. Say the kitchen is a restaurant and you’re a new customer to role model play ideas.
Toys and Accessories for a Montessori Play Kitchen
Rotate these accessories and allow kids to arrange the kitchen how they wish. Add a notepad and pencils for taking orders in a restaurant. Provide dress-ups for different dramatic play themes. Simple additions will continue to inspire their imaginative play. Stock your Montessori kitchen with engaging, open-ended toys that spark creativity. Some great options include:
- Child-safe kitchen tools – Wooden knives, spoons, whisks, spatulas, and more
- Pots, pans, baking sheets – For pretend cooking and baking
- Plates, bowls, utensils – For setting the table
- Food items – Play fruits, vegetables, breads, pastries
- Appliances – Toy blender, mixer, coffee maker
- Aprons, chef hats – For dress-up play
- Kitchen linens – Toy dish towels, oven mitts, pot holders
- Grocery store items – Empty food packages, shopping baskets
- Dining furniture – Play table, chairs, booths
Conclusion
Montessori play kitchens are a wonderful asset for promoting healthy development. With engaging toys and plenty of space for creativity, children can get lost in productive pretend play. Build their independence and life skills by letting them take the lead. A thoughtfully stocked Montessori kitchen will continue providing learning opportunities for years to come.
