So, here are the Montessori resources that I found useful! Enjoy and please share if you discovered something that I haven’t seen yet!
There is one of the original books by Maria Montessori that is available online for free: “The Montessori Method” by Maria Montessori .
Honey organized this amazing swap (7 moms putting together 7 boxes of materials relating to one of the 7 continents and mailing each other duplicate packages to ensure that everyone has continent boxes from all over the world! See more here: Montessori Continent Box Swap). Honey found absolutely remarkable swappers to provide her with one of a kind continent boxes!
Leann was one of the first to respond. Lean also was participating in Honey’s other swap and did Central America for 12 other moms… and this is the list of incredible items she put together for us!
Read more…
A very kind and resourceful mom is sharing an incredible idea she had for letting the kids understand the enormity of the geological time periods on Earth. The trick? Ingenious in its simplicity: using a very long multicolored ribbon. Different geological periods are indicated by different colors, their length – by ribbon length! On top of the ribbon the kids were putting toy-dinosaurs, toy-mammoths, toy-humans and home made fossils to make the results both visual and tactile. I loved this idea so much, that I am definitely doing one of those for our own Geology units! Read the full descriptions, to-do directions and measurements (and many more wonderful ideas) here: Geologic Time Line Activity by Homeschool Den Mom
Another wonderful free resource for baby’s development in music: Montessori Bells online. This is a free internet based program for discrimination of musical sounds by pairing and ordering, developing pitch identification. Presented in a form of fun and interactive game, this program mimics extremely expensive, but absolutely ingenious Montessory bell material: children manipulate “virtual” bells, ordering them, matching, having fun while their ear gets finer attuned to various musical sequences and notes. Very beneficial regardless of weather your are upbringing a professional musician, or just would like to expand your child’s horizons and developmental possibilities.
This song turned out to be so much fun, that we sing it even after we were done with our unit in Geography.
“I live on Planet Earth” song to the “He’s Got The Whole World in His Hands“
We tried singing it with props: I printed pictures of earth, USA map, our State, our state with it’s city on marked, picture of our house. I punched wholes in all pictures and at every verse we’d string another picture on the “necklace” and sing it wearing the “necklace”. This fantastic idea comes from here: My Montessori Journey – Geography
Materials and song are available here: I live on Planet Earth file.
Montessori Practical Life transferring activities seem redundant and boring to me… and absolutely irresistible to my kid. I think my older one, Sunshine, can spend hours just pouring water or spooning beans. Though it’s tongs and tweezers that are the dearest to his heart!
This activity came together spontaneously, but it immediately became his favorite out of all our similar activities.
What did we use? I happened to have these things in my house…
Beading is an important part of Montessori teaching. Large beads are offered to toddlers to improve their motor skills. Small beads are offered to preschoolers to get them ready for writing. Beads – are part of sensorial materials for Montessori. Around four, mathematic bead materials are introduced.
Who said that size doesn’t matter? It does, when it comes to planet sizes. As we are learning the Solar System, I constantly chant: “Jupiter, the biggest planet in the Solar System… Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system…” Yet, size numbers don’t mean much to a four year old. So, we did this project to try hands on learning on the planets sizes and their distance from the sun.
The idea for this project came from The Planets in Our Solar System (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out, Science, Stage 2) by Franklyn M. Branley.
I still cannot believe we did it! Thanks to Honey, the amazing Mondorfment Mom who wittily combines Montessori, Waldorf and Attachment Parenting, quite a lot of us had a chance to learn about the world and to find fun and interactive ways to bring this to our children.