Thanks to everyone who wrote in about infant material! Yes, we know that the equipment is expensive, so we have been compiling good DIY suggestions to share with everyone.
Sue Eustis, director of the Apple Ridge Montessori School in Catonsville, Maryland, exhorts that "... all of the Montessori equipment can be made at home!"
Sue suggests button matching for older children for whom choking is no longer a concern. Look for pairs of identical buttons in different colors that can be used for matching in the same way that you use the Colored Tablets.
Once your child has worked with this basic matching exercise, you can vary the sizes of the buttons to expand upon the exercise.
For younger children, look for three pairs of large coat buttons in red, blue, and yellow. These buttons should be bigger than your child's mouth, so that there is no chance of them slipping in.
The feel of the buttons is nice, too.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Testing for Entrance into Kindergarten
In the recent New York Times article, Tips for the Admissions Test ... to Kindergarten , Sharon Otterman highlights aspects of a disturbing new trend that focuses on prepping children to take Kindergarten admission tests.
For example...
Test preparation for basic skills leads to a number of problems including 1) a reluctance of children to experiment and learn by trial and error, and 2) the creation of a fear of making a mistake, which will inhibit normal development processes.
For those of you not using our Montessori teaching albums, here are a few pages of age-appropriate material for children in the PreK to Kindergarten years!
One of Maria Montessori's original books, The Montessori Method, has also been made available online for free, many thanks to The Celebration of Women Writers project.
For example...
Kayla Rosenblum sat upright and poised as she breezed through the shapes and numbers, a leopard-patterned finger puppet resting next to her for moral support.
But then came something she had never seen before: a visual analogy showing a picture of a whole cake next to a slice of cake. What picture went with a loaf of bread in the same way?
Kayla, who will be 4 in December, held her tiny pointer finger still as she inspected the four choices. “Too hard,” she peeped.
Test preparation for basic skills leads to a number of problems including 1) a reluctance of children to experiment and learn by trial and error, and 2) the creation of a fear of making a mistake, which will inhibit normal development processes.
For those of you not using our Montessori teaching albums, here are a few pages of age-appropriate material for children in the PreK to Kindergarten years!
One of Maria Montessori's original books, The Montessori Method, has also been made available online for free, many thanks to The Celebration of Women Writers project.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Holiday Gifts of Clay or Cookies
Here are two popular ideas from the Montessori classroom:
1. Using modeling clay, mold a lump of clay into a small plate. Your child can place his or her palm print into the clay. Fire or dry the clay, let your child sign it (or scribble with paints), and you have one great gift for a loving family member. You can use a baby's footprint, too, for great results and no clay on the fingers.
2. The same concept as above, but use cookie dough on a circular baking sheet. The hand impression goes onto the cookie dough and you bake the cookie. Frosting and sprinkles optional. If you use a small disposable cookie sheet, you can just place the whole sheet into a box and wrap the box.
Looking for the ultimate Montessori gift this year? Try our Montessori teaching albums for infants and toddlers!
If you are looking for a quick, efficient, and great place to buy gifts online, check out the Cool Mom Picks Holiday Gift Guide. We're advertising in it for the first time!
1. Using modeling clay, mold a lump of clay into a small plate. Your child can place his or her palm print into the clay. Fire or dry the clay, let your child sign it (or scribble with paints), and you have one great gift for a loving family member. You can use a baby's footprint, too, for great results and no clay on the fingers.
2. The same concept as above, but use cookie dough on a circular baking sheet. The hand impression goes onto the cookie dough and you bake the cookie. Frosting and sprinkles optional. If you use a small disposable cookie sheet, you can just place the whole sheet into a box and wrap the box.
Looking for the ultimate Montessori gift this year? Try our Montessori teaching albums for infants and toddlers!
If you are looking for a quick, efficient, and great place to buy gifts online, check out the Cool Mom Picks Holiday Gift Guide. We're advertising in it for the first time!
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Montessori for Infants: Who has a child under 18 months?
Has everyone with a child under 18 months received our infant supplement? If not, please email us (or check our new customer support links on Monday).
The supplements will help everyone work around the expensive material for infants that include brain-body exercises and materials such as the Object Permanence sets, Imbucare, and others. We introduce DIY ideas and substitutions that are quite useful for maintaining a good classroom setup at home on a budget.
The supplements will help everyone work around the expensive material for infants that include brain-body exercises and materials such as the Object Permanence sets, Imbucare, and others. We introduce DIY ideas and substitutions that are quite useful for maintaining a good classroom setup at home on a budget.
Montessori House: New Customer Service Announcement
We are pleased to announce that on Monday November 9th, you will see a brand-new Montessori House customer service section on our website with contact information for teaching material support, general questions, and other issues.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Montessori for Infants: Object Permanence Box DIY
In our Montessori teaching album for infants and toddlers, we discuss the use and presentation of a lot of material that is designed to promote the brain-body development link.
This object permanence box for infants is a wonderful piece of equipment that can also be made at home. For example, you can take a small box (about half the size of a shoe box) and cut a round hole exactly the size of the ball on the top of the box. Using the ball shown, your child can experiment by putting the ball through the top round hole and then lifting the lid to find that the ball is inside the box.
Promoting this sorts of physical and intellectual interaction addresses your child's development needs in these early years.
For those of you who have purchased this teaching album, it is important to get or make as much of this series of material as possible -- it is all in the same chapter in the album.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Montessori for Children Under Two Years of Age
The Montessori curriculum for children between infancy and two years of age has been an active topic of discussion. The main focus of the curriculum is to help your young child develop in the areas in which he or she should naturally be focusing such as language, body and brain coordination and development, and interaction with others.
Some of the simplest material that we introduce for infants and toddlers is the most important. For example, there is a whole section of lessons in the album that addresses brain and body development directly: the object permanence box use that covers the stage of development in which children discover that an object continues to be the same, even when you cannot see it (e.g. Mommy still exists even if she has gone to work this morning); imbucare boxes designed for infants to work on hand-eye coordination as he or she works with cylinders, cubes, triangle prisms, and rectangular prisms (are you using the language of the pieces to introduce the vocabulary to your child?); supinated wrist movement exercises that help children work with hand and wrist movements that will be the foundation for writing, fine motor skills, and other key movements later, and; simple shape puzzles, bells, and mirrors.
We discourage you from attempting to push reading and other topics that might be considered more academic at this time. The building blocks for development are crucial, and your child is not helped by learning to memorize words on cards or other material that is outside of his or her developmental needs now.
The prices of material such as the imbucare boxes or the object permanence boxes can be a bit daunting, but you can usually find good deals online and the price of these pieces of material are inline with those of regular toys, so we encourage you to make the substitution when you buy gifts and toys for your child. A lot of our readers have had success putting this material on gift lists for holidays and other special occasions as well.
Some of the simplest material that we introduce for infants and toddlers is the most important. For example, there is a whole section of lessons in the album that addresses brain and body development directly: the object permanence box use that covers the stage of development in which children discover that an object continues to be the same, even when you cannot see it (e.g. Mommy still exists even if she has gone to work this morning); imbucare boxes designed for infants to work on hand-eye coordination as he or she works with cylinders, cubes, triangle prisms, and rectangular prisms (are you using the language of the pieces to introduce the vocabulary to your child?); supinated wrist movement exercises that help children work with hand and wrist movements that will be the foundation for writing, fine motor skills, and other key movements later, and; simple shape puzzles, bells, and mirrors.
We discourage you from attempting to push reading and other topics that might be considered more academic at this time. The building blocks for development are crucial, and your child is not helped by learning to memorize words on cards or other material that is outside of his or her developmental needs now.
The prices of material such as the imbucare boxes or the object permanence boxes can be a bit daunting, but you can usually find good deals online and the price of these pieces of material are inline with those of regular toys, so we encourage you to make the substitution when you buy gifts and toys for your child. A lot of our readers have had success putting this material on gift lists for holidays and other special occasions as well.
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