My Top Ten Favorite Montessori Materials
There are so many beautiful materials, it’s hard to choose. Still, it was fun to sit down and try to narrow it down to my ten most favorite…the ones I wish I could have worked with when I was a kid!
10. The Sandpaper Letters – brilliantly enabling children to see, touch, and say (hear) a phonetic sound. It doesn’t matter what your learning style is, these have got you covered.
9. The Movable Alphabet – what a great idea! The first time I heard of it – without seeing it – I thought, “An alphabet that moves? How can that be?” Sure enough, it does.
8. The Golden Beads/Bead Stair – math has never been so hands-on or so satisfying. Plus, the beads can be used for truly endless types of math activities.
7. Pouring & Scooping Work – the perfect intersection of the child’s own desires, and the acquiring of a life skill. Kids can’t resist it.
6. Nomenclature & Classification Cards – hmm, I wonder why I like these so much? I love the fact that Montessori kids can tell you the parts of a volcano, the sun, the moon, and the earth by the age of 5.
5. The Wooden Puzzle Maps – a fantastic way to teach geography, and like so many other Montessori materials, they’re beautiful as well.
4. The Checkerboard – fun, challenging, and clever. I never would have thought this up myself, but it works perfectly. 
3. The Triangle Boxes – how I wish I had these in high school during my geometry class! Things would have made so much more sense.
2. The Pink Tower – it’s just so perfectly formed, each block proportionately smaller and smaller. Everything from the color to the shape of it just says “Montessori”.
1. The Binomial & Trinomial Cubes – I’ll never forget when I took the Montessori training, and the teacher was explaining how each side of each cube related to a term in the binomial and trinomial equations. A light bulb went on! I got it!
I’m sure you have your own personal favorites! Care to share?
I am really intrigued by the math materials. While I was good at math, I am pretty sure that I don’t “understand” it. Is there any way I can as an adult take a course or something on Montessori math? One Montessori book I read explained the Pythagorean theorem, which I can use, but didn’t know why it worked until I saw that.
Also can you explain the checkerboard?
Hi, Jeanne! The nice thing about the internet is that you can Google any Montessori material name and up pop many sites explaining it, often with pictures and even videos. So Google “montessori checkerboard” and you’ll find out all about it!
Thank you for your list! And the links for info too!! I’m just about to embark on making my own bead materials this summer. I’d love to just buy them all, but there are so many other Montessori materials that I want to buy that I couldn’t make appropriately so I thought I’d start with the bead materials as I know my dc will want to work with them right away!! I really enjoy your blog and site, thank you for providing such great resources and ideas!! Blessings!
http://happyheartsmom.typepad.com/sweetness_and_light/
Good for you for making the beads! That’s definitely a “doable” project; I buy handmade bead stairs from a mom on eBay and they’re awesome – I don’t have the time to make them, but she does a great job.
Well, I caved and went ahead and bought ALL the bead material, I couldn’t wait, LOL!!! I’m sure I’ll be inspired to make other stuff, this was just too daunting!! Maybe I’ll make a quilt checkerboard in my spare time
Thanks for the links to the presentation materials.
I am a homeschooled mom, and not trained in Montessori. As I’ve researched Montessori, I am coming to realize that I may not be able to teach my kids in the true Montessori way. I can’t afford lots of materials…but with all the free and fairly affordable printable materials, nomenclature cards, classification cards, the one thing I know for sure is, even if all my kids get to do is look at those, they will be exposed to much more than what I would have thought to expose them to. For instance the 7 wonders of the world cards on this site. Beautiful! Just showing my kids those make me feel like I have done a good thing. Just with those cards, and the internet and the library, my 8 year old can find days worth of things to learn and talk with mom about ! We may not have the rods and beads and checkerboards, but we have the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the temple of Artemis! My 5 year old and I do the calendar activity set, just for fun ! In my opinion, thats is what education should be. Thank you for that!
Hi, Salena! You’d be surprised at how many homeschooling families and public school teachers bring “a little bit of Montessori” into their classrooms. I agree with you – every little bit is a gift you can give to your children!
And the most beautiful part is, they don’t know that they are learning! We try to introduce them in a way that is very casual. “Look at this beautiful place”. Wonder what these kids did everyday! ” And that relaxed, non-threating method is what Montessori has taught me. My 8 year old would run if he thought it was school, or something I was forcing upon him. (Sad statement on what public school did to him, I know).
Yes, it’s really true, that old saying: “Education is not the filling of a bucket, it’s the lighting of a fire.” Just grab their curiosity and they take it from there!
The ease of the 3 part lesson with my 5 year old. I realized that in the past I was not taking the time to actually say the names of things with him. The fact that I know now a way to show him without frustration.. Name it, Show it, Ask it. If he gets it wrong, name it again, without correcting him… This montessori method I have been doing really makes our education at home seem very natural. I can see that they are more relaxed. They smile when I say thank you for coming to play with me (what I call the introduction sessions). I so appreciate how free that makes me feel too.
I love that quote ! Thank you for that. Have you seen that video of Ken Robinson “School kills creativity” ?
Yes, I love that video! I have linked to it from my Montessori for Everyone Facebook page and of course it’s been passed around on Twitter, Facebook, etc. by many people.