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.

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.

Toddlers: Suggested Reading

For children in the two and up age group, we recommend daytime read aloud sessions of 15-30 minutes using a non-fiction source.

We found some great (free) material online about water and the Chesapeake Bay that we wanted to share with everyone who is homeschooling or informally working with their children at home.

This daytime reading is not meant to take the place of time-honored bedtime stories!

Between Infancy and Toddlerhood: Choosing Curriculum Material

A lot of you have written us to ask which Montessori teaching album is best for your 2 to 3 1/2 year old children.

We highly encourage everyone with children in this age group to start with the Montessori for Infants and Toddlers teaching album instead of moving directly to the Primary class album because a number of key lessons such as use of the Imbucare boxes, Object Permanence Boxes, refined hand and wrist movement projects, and language and interaction work provide important building blocks for overall growth and development.

Language leading to reading and writing is a natural progression that we do not rush in the Montessori classroom. The infant and toddler album contains a lot of material that is focused on developing overall language skills that your child can build upon at his or her own pace.

Questions? Send them along in comment form to share with everyone!

Montessori Versus Nursery School: Role of Parents

Much is written about the Montessori Method as it applies to children. But what about parents? How is your role different as a Montessori parent?

Here are some tips:

1. Nursery schools cater to parents. Montessori schools focus on your child.

2. When you drop your child off at Montessori school, you will be expected to be as inobtrusive as possible. This is not because we do not like you or want to avoid you! It is because we need to create an ideal child-focused learning environment. We hold one-on-one parent meetings and host pot-luck dinners for parent-teacher interaction. It is great if parents enjoy socializing with one another, but please try to move away from the playground or door to the classroom, preferably to a nearby coffee shop, when you do get together. It is very distracting to children to see or hear their parents nearby when class begins.

3. Please schedule a time to talk to teachers or the administration. If you can email or leave a voice mail, we will be every so grateful. Drop off and pick up times can be challenging for young children and our priority will be taking care of the children.

4. If you would like to observe a class, we will be glad to accommodate you, but it might take some scheduling if we are starting a new class or have a number of new students to help acclimate.

Questions? We would love to hear from you!

Montessori Sensorial & Colors: Before Color Tablets

Montessori Sensorial work includes lovely Color Tablets that are ideal for introducing children to the concept and names of colors.

But if your child is young enough so that he or she still prefers to bite and touch objects instead of showing an interest in handling them delicately, wait for a bit and introduce naming exercises with objects that he or she can touch and bite such as a bright red apple, a bunch of purple grapes, or the peeling of an orange tangerine.

You can prepare a bunch of purple grapes and a bunch of green grapes for your child's exploration and enjoyment to introduce the name of the fruit and the two colors.

Next, prepare three-part cards using these same fruits and vegetables!

Montessori curriculum for infants and toddlers in our Montessori teaching albums.

Montessori at Home: Homeschooling Classroom

If you are using Montessori at home, remember to create a special room or space in your home for the classroom, even if your child is still quite young. This delineation of space allows your child to enter his or her unique learning environment complete with child-sized material, shelves, and projects.

Parents who are using our teaching albums: Refer to the Learning Environment section in your binder. Try taking photos of your home environment before and after you implement the changes we suggest for creating a child-friendly and touch-friendly environment.

Learn more about our Montessori teaching albums to use at home.