Fellow Montessori Momma, Joanita, sent me this great email with all the DIY Montessori items she has made and implemented for her beautiful daughter, Daniela.
Language
Sandpaper letters can cost you anything from about R500. She made these for her daughter who is starting to learn the letters of her name. This cost her a few pages of 160gsm paper, white school glue and sand from the sandpit (she sifted it a few times to get rid of the bigger pieces).
She used red for consonants and blue for vowels so that the letters are the same colour as the Montessori moveable alphabet.
She also made one with her name written in full.
For this letter matching activity she printed her daughter’s name, using a free Montessori font she downloaded. The moveable alphabet was from Kid-Ease and is definitely an investment (both her kids are using it – for learning letters, building sight words and building sentences).
Free fonts available here and here
Here is a tutorial and free printable for making your own moveable alphabet.
They are using a letter basket to learn beginning sounds. She made alphabet cards by printing the wall cards from Helpful Garden Montessori smaller (probably 2 or 4 pages per A4). She used toys and other items they already had in the house for her daughter to match to the beginning sounds.
Maths
This is their version of the Spindle Boxes. The control of error is the different colour sticks.
Learning quantity and one to one correspondence by placing the correct number of ladybugs on the leave.
This set of beads was about R30 from Kid-ease, but many people make their own beads {keep an eye out on the blog for the tutorial on how to make the beads coming soon}. It has so many uses. Her 3 year old is using it to count and learn quantity, sequencing, etc. Her 5 year old is currently using it to do addition and learn about different ways to make a number .
The bead flashcards are available from here.
Practical Life
Her dad made a version of the nuts and bolts board by putting this together with odds and ends he had. This has provided both her 3 and 5 year old with hours of fun.
HUGE thank you to Joanita for contributing to our Montessori Madness series. These are fantastic!
