Montessori

This page has some photos of Montessori-type activities I have put together for the kiddos. Some of them I have made myself, with ideas gathered from all over the blogosphere, while others are purchased from various Montessori suppliers. We also use a lot of Melissa and Doug products, which we love.

I want to caution that I am not at all an expert (or even very knowledgeable at all) on Maria Montessori or her methods. I am still just beginning-learning and trying to figure all this out myself. Nor am I interested in being a Montessori purist. I take what I am learning and use it as I see fit for my children and myself.

With that caveat, I will share what I have put together so far:

Our set-up:

These are some shelves which I rotate weekly with a few activities for each category.

math center

Some language materials

geography center

music center

geometry

science and nature

And here are some activities.

Practical life:

Polishing pennies with a toothbrush rubbed on half a lemon and then dipped in a bowl of salt.

Spooning and sorting wooden beads.

Transferring water with dropper.

Dressing frames. Homemade from picture frames and old clothes.

Geometry: tongue depressors with colored dot stickers on the ends. Written on the sticks is “triangle,” “square,” or “pentagon.” All she has to do is match the colored dots to make the shape. I plan on making more of these eventually.

Sorting dinosaurs to the correct continents and matching with puzzle map.

Sensorial: Different textured materials (cloth, sandpaper, foil, canvas, etc) glued onto index cards. Wear a blindfold and match by feel.

Shakers made with film cannisters filled with various things (sand, beads, etc). Match by sound. Self-checking with stickers on bottom.

Visual discrimination and nature study:Matching shells

Sorting shells by pattern:

Sorting shells by size:

In addition we have things like buckets of rice or beans, lots of file folder games (this one matches an object picture to each letter of the alphabet-initial sounds)

blocks, including pattern blocks (look at that focus!)

puzzles, various cards, stamps, stickers, etc, plus inclusion in actual daily life (here are Squirt and JBug picking and chopping herbs for the night’s meal)

I wrote about these very special blocks here.

and about this book here:

Crunchy math goodness!

Here was a day’s lesson on number recognition.

Matching magnetic numbers on a white board: for this she simply had to match up the numbers in the basket with the numbers I placed in order on the white board.

Building a “stair” with snap cubes:I made rods of lengths 1-10 with snap cubes. JBug had to arrange them into a stair. It took her awhile at first because she had to count each rod. After she built it once she noticed that from now on all she had to do was match the next rod which was one block longer and building went MUCH faster!

Matching cubes with numbers:pretty self explanatory. She struggled with this a bit, so we will repeat soon.

Writing letters in cornmeal:

Fur-bearing animal cards, labels, and scraps of fur to feel and match.

I have a BUNCH more that I just have not photographed yet. I will get them up as soon as I get a chance.