The Ultimate Post About Montessori Albums
I get a lot of questions about albums, so I’m going to try and answer them all in one helpful post! In this post, I will also give an in-depth review of the printed Montessori albums that are available, and give some links to online albums as well.
Disclosure: I have purchased some albums from each of the companies mentioned below, but I am not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned, and receive no compensation from anyone if any of you decide to buy their albums.
Frequently Asked Questions About Albums
1. What are albums?
Albums are basically instruction manuals for using Montessori materials. They may be called “manuals” or “guides”. They are traditionally given to students who take the Montessori training at a training center. They also include background about Maria Montessori’s teachings, the purpose behind many of the materials, and information about child development.
2. Do you sell albums?
No, I do not have my own albums or sell anyone else’s. I would like to write my own someday, but haven’t had a chance yet.
3. Are there free albums available online?
These days, you can usually Google the name of a Montessori material (“instructions for division bead board”) and find sites and blogs with instructions and pictures pretty easily. As well, there are several online albums that provide instructions for using Montessori materials:
Shu-Chen Jenny Yen – 3-6 albums
Montessori World – 3-6 albums
Montessori Teacher’s Collective – albums for 3-6 and 6-9
Info Montessori – 3-6
There are also 3-6 albums available for purchase as e-books from Montessori Book that are reasonably priced and fairly well done.
4. Can I buy an album with a schedule of presentations to do day by day?
There is only one set of albums that has a day-by-day format, and those are the 3-6 albums from New Child Montessori. However, those albums do not contain presentations, but rather consist of lesson plans to follow for each day. You can find a full review of the New Child Montessori albums in the “Album Reviews” section below.
Generally, Montessori teachers do not use a pre-made day-to-day schedule, since the presentations are supposed to follow each individual child’s progress and interests. You can, however, certainly plan a week or month at a time, basing your schedule on the children you work with.
5. What albums are available, and which do you recommend?
I can’t endorse any specific albums, but if you read on, I will give a review of the various albums that are available. Situations vary, so some people might prefer certain albums over others. I’ll give as much info as I can, but in the end the decision is up to you.
Album Reviews:
Montessori Matters from Nienhuis
First, we have Montessori Matters Albums from Nienhuis. I can’t link to individual albums because Nienhuis changes their product links frequently, but if you visit their main site and search for “Montessori Matters”, you will find the albums I mention.
The Montessori Matters albums were written by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. They were all written in the 1960′s, although they’ve been updated many times since then. They are similar to the albums I used in my own training, since one of the authors, Sister Mary Motz, was my elementary trainer. They are spiral-bound with soft covers and reasonably priced ($20-30 per album).
A. There is one album entitled simply “Montessori Matters”; it does not list an age range at the Nienhuis site, but it is for ages 3-6. Covering all the curricular areas, it contains many drawings and black and white photographs, and is written in a clear, easy-to-understand style. The one drawback is that it does show its age, in terms of writing style and photos. Still, most of the information in it hasn’t changed in the past 40 years. I would consider it a “classic” album that could be used by anyone at home or school.
B. Nienhuis also carries three other Montessori Matters albums: Language, History, and Mathematics. All three were written by my trainer, Sister Mary Motz (one of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur), and are for ages 3-9 (primary and lower elementary). They are similar to the first Montessori Matters album in terms of writing style and content, but contain more in-depth information about each of the curricular areas they cover.
Albums from North American Montessori Center
Second, we have the North American Montessori Center (NAMC) albums.
A. First, they offer Classroom Guides specifically for each age group; each classroom guide talks about children’s physical, social, emotional, and academic stages and gives information on setting up a classroom, arranging the materials, and working with the children for that age group. The Classroom Guides do not contain presentations for the materials.
B. They also have albums for each curricular area and each age group (toddler through 9-12). These albums are fairly expensive ($150 each), although they can be purchased in sets (all the Toddler albums, all the 3-6 albums, etc.) at a discount. They come in sturdy 3-ring binders and the album pages are laminated. They also include color pictures of each material and presentation. If you can afford them, they are excellent; the clear writing and pictures make the lessons very easy to follow.
C. There are also materials on CD-ROM, including blackline masters and support materials like self-testing worksheets and nomenclature materials. They are designed to coordinate with the NAMC albums.
Guides for the Montessori Classroom from New Child Montessori
Gini Newcomb has authored several guides that are helpful in the Montessori Classroom.
A. First, she offers four Guides for the Montessori Classroom, one for each season: winter, spring, summer, and fall. Each guide is spiral bound with a soft cover, and contains lesson plans for each day (with an emphasis on nature, biomes, and continents). The guides include suggestions for activities to go with the lessons (songs, art projects); and book lists, which give recommended titles for each topic covered. The seasonal guides do not contain presentations for the Montessori materials. Each guide is $30, or you can buy the set of four for $100.
B. Second, she offers a Supplement to Guides for the Montessori Classroom: Instructions for the Montessori Work. This book does contain step-by-step presentations for the Montessori materials. This book should be used in conjunction with the seasonal guides, since the presentations are laid out day-by-day to coordinate with the guides, rather than grouped by subject matter the way other albums are. The supplement is $65. Both the seasonal guides & the supplement are for ages 3-6.
C. Third, there is a guide entitled Art for the Montessori Classroom. This guide is for ages 3-9 (I think it could be stretched to age 12 depending on the abilities of the child). It contains instructions for setting up a Montessori art area, and specific directions for teaching many different kinds of art activities and skills. It is $75.
Teacher Manuals from Montessori Research & Development
Montessori Research and Development offers teacher manuals for Infant/Toddler, 3-6, and Elementary. The elementary albums are not specified for 6-9 or 9-12, but they do let you view each album’s table of contents as a PDF, and it appears that the albums are appropriate for the full span of 6-12. The albums range in price from $8 – $40, depending on the number of pages in the album. You can choose between spiral or smooth binding.
The Montessori R & D manuals are extremely detailed and well-written. They include quite a bit of information on how the presentations aid in brain development. However, they do not include pictures of any of the materials or presentations.
Teaching Manuals from My Montessori House
My Montessori House, creator of Montessori DVDs that teach phonics, has recently branched out into making Montessori Teaching Albums. They can be used by parents or teachers. They are based on the albums and notes of an AMI teacher and are quite thorough and well-written. They do include pictures of almost every material; the pictures could be bigger, but they are helpful. The price is quite reasonable.
In Conclusion
In a perfect world, we could buy all the albums from each of the above companies – each set of albums has something to offer the Montessori classroom. Most of us can’t do that, though, so hopefully this post will help you decide which album(s) work best for you. You may want to buy a one from each, so that you can better decide which ones would work in your situation.
Dear Lori,
We greatly appreciate the opportunity for NAMC’s resources to be included in Montessori for Everyone’s album review, and especially for the very positive comments received on our curriculum albums. We kindly invite all interested to either visit our website: http://www.montessoritraining.net, and click on the flower to view sample pages from each and every one of our over 40 curriculum albums, or call us at anytime at: 1-877-531-6665 to discuss our resources further.
We wish to extend our gratitude to Lori for her valuable time and attention to this project.
Sincerely,
North American Montessori Center
Dale Gausman, Program Director & Founder
Hi, Dale! Thank you for stopping by. I was very impressed with your albums, and with the classroom guides as well. Thank you again for your kind words, and have a wonderful holiday season!
Hi Lori,
Thank You for your generous work promoting Montessori. I want to express my gratitude for your review of the New Child Montessori materials.
To see sample pages from all the materials go to http://www.newchildmontessori.com
I welcome any questions about the materials. Just use the contact link on my website.
Peace to All,
Gini Newcomb, New Child Montessori
Hi, Gini! I’m so glad that there are lots of Montessori resources out there for both teachers and parents. One of the many nice things about living in the internet age
Thanks for your hard work, too! And happy new year!
i am a Mom of two boys 18 mos and 2 1/2 at the time of this note, I know I want them to have a Montessori educatioal experience and I know that I want to homeschool them. I live in the DFW area and I am so impressed by the resources I am finding here and in the sites listed on this page. i am just wondering if there are ever home school coops formed that emphansize Montessori methods. I would love to have something ive out here but even a facebook group or meetup might be good. Do any exist? If not have you ever thought of founding something like that.
Hi, Jennifer! There are lots of groups like that, especially Yahoo groups. If you go to Yahoo and click on Groups, you can search for “Montessori” and find lots of active groups, many specifically for Montessori homeschooling.
And, this discussion board is fantastic:
Real Learning Forums: Early Childhood Learning
I’ve never thought about starting something like that because there are already so many, and I’m already so busy
You can buy albums now??
*shocked*
Why do the training?
Hi, Mandy! Albums have been available for years (the ones from Nienhuis, for example, have been sold by them for decades). So that’s nothing new. I can tell you that having albums available definitely doesn’t mean people choose not to take the training – at the training center where I went in the Chicago area, their enrollment is higher than ever.
There are many legitimate reasons to buy albums, including people like me who are trained but would like additional resources to use in the classroom. People who trained years ago may want updated information. And people interested in Montessori may buy albums to get an idea of what it’s about.
When I took my training “they” made such a big thing about “your own albums” – understanding, etc. I can see your observations about updated info and additional resources – however I’m still surprised that AMI is comfortable with Neinhuis (their number one supplier of materials) selling them. Just my 2 cents
I’d like to share an additional album/training option. Karen Tyler has a yahoo group you can join: worldwidemontessori. I am taking her worldwidemontessori12 group and I am REALLY impressed. I have learned a lot of information from her albums – they are very affordable.
I have NAMC & while the albums were nice they left a lot out. I felt I learned more from reading MM’s books. Karen’s stuff really breaks things down and shows so many steps/how to do the presentation. I didn’t find NAMC hard to do at all, & neither do I find Karen’s hard. I loved the CD that came with my NAMC but I LOVE the albums Karen made. So…I recommend Karen’s (which is also a LOT cheaper but has a LOT more extensions/quality/amount of info…and it’s done in a year) over the NAMC albums.
Good Morning! I am so excited about what Montessori for Everyone is doing on this site! My name is Karen Tyler and Honey notified me of having left a post (see above) about the albums that I have available on my website (being updated) and through my online Montessori Teacher Training courses that I give on Yahoo Groups. I have 12 Montessori “Albums”….Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Mathematics, Physical Science, Ecology, Geology, Botany, Zoology, Geography….and later this month History and Astronomy! Very affordable from an AMS certified teacher with over 20 years teaching children! If interested…just email me at karen@amontessorimarketplace.com Most of the albums are $25 (ages 2-6).
Hi, Karen! Thanks for adding your info. I hope people check out your albums!
I have purchased all the albums from Montessori Research & Development – early childhood, primary & elementary. They are very detailed & thorough and each lesson flows naturally into the next, so they are very easy albums to use.
I am a homeschool montessori parent of primary & elementary aged children & have found it extremely difficult to source 6-12yr albums. The elementary albums from Montessori Reserach & Development are the more comprehensive I have been able to find, so for those wanting to continue the montessori curriculum past primary I definitely recommend them!
I also have a couple of albums from NAMC but have found these ones to be more detailed & methodical.
The albums also make comprehensive notes on suppliers to source various materials from depending on the lesson & also list detail on many of the Niemhuis word study label sets, so you are able to make them yourself and save the expense!
There is only one draw back & that is they are written with the assumption that you know what you are doing, as their are no diagrams. If you are a parent of a montessori child or have had experience with some of the equipment that it shouldn’t be an issue. I am a parent that home schools my children (who used to attend a montessori school) & I have been able to work through & understand the lessons. Note – you must follow the albums in progression, as I have found that when I have taken exercises out of context sometimes they do not flow smoothly or I do not understand how to present them. This can be a draw back when wanting to “follow the child’s” rate of progress.
Lori –
Thank you so much for including Montessori R & D in your discussion of Montessori albums. How wonderful that more and more parents are home schooling their children with Montessori! You provide a great service to the community.
We hope to meet this growing demand better than we currently do by including more illustrations. Many of our manuals do offer illustrations of the materials, but not of the actual presentation. Our manuals were originally developed for those in a Montessori teacher training program who would draw their own pictures to create a “personal” album. They are used at dozens of AMS training programs including Princeton TEC, Michigan MTEC (Montessori Teacher Education Center), MTEC- San Francisco, Follett Bookstores (Xavier University, Barry University, South Mountain CC, Palm Beach CC), MTEC Sacramento, MT of Southern Nevada and Center for Contemporary Montessori Programs (College of St. Catherine’s).
Zsuzsa, thank you for taking the time to write about our manuals. Your comments will be useful, I’m sure, to many parents preparing to home school their children. We do have sample pages for each of our manuals that we hope provide an accurate representation. Our manuals are comparatively detailed yet visually unrefined – a drawback we hope to rectify!
To view our manuals you can visit Montessori Research and Development Teacher Manuals.
If you choose a certain manual, for example, Early Childhood Geography,
you can click on “VIEW TABLE OF CONTENTS IN PDF” or “VIEW SAMPLE PAGES IN PDF” to get a better sense of the manual’s content, structure, visuals and presentation format.
It’s such a great feeling to have enthusiastic users of our manuals and materials… but all feedback is most welcome!
If you or any of your readers have questions about the manuals, please feel free to contact me at ckreuzer@montessorird.com or 510-278-1115.
Warm Regards,
Chandra
Hi Lori,
I am searching information about infant and toddler materials. In September I will be accepting 14 kids, aged 10 and a half months, into my day care group. I would like to learn a daily program/curriculum for this age; which materials to use (that was the easiest to find, since there are so many shops), how to use the materials. I understand how Montessori works from 3 years on.
The most difficult time for me is, when the child can not speak yet, can not walk yet, cries cause parents are not there. Kids aged 15 or 16 months are already beginning to be active and they have the ability to stay focused on one toy. But the youngsters, i am having problems with. I cannot seem to find any useful information for this period, which is the most critical. I would love to buy a dvd or video online where all the montessori materials for toddlers and infants would be shown.
Any kind of information, would be great. I checked all the links, but could not find what I am looking for.
Lara
Hi, Lara! There are lots of great infant and toddler resources; of course you can go to YouTube and search for “infant montessori” and “toddler montessori” to see if there are videos of classrooms, children using materials, presentations, etc.
Here are all of my Toddler posts: Montessori for Everyone Infant & Toddler posts.
I highly recommend my Comprehensive List for Toddlers, which you can use as a checklist to outfit your classroom, as well as printing one for each child to keep track of the work they do: Comprehensive List for Toddlers.
Here are very well-written, thorough albums (manuals) for Infant & Toddler from Montessori Research and Development: Montessori R & D Infant & Toddler Albums.
Here are some helpful videos including some for Practical Life, which can be in Infant & Toddler or Preschool: Videos on Materials.
There will be no daily curriculum for Infant & Toddler available anywhere, since everything is individualized to each child’s pace. There are few if any group lessons at this age – everything is one-on-one.
The truth is, it will be very difficult for you to have a Montessori Toddler room without having taken the Montessori Infant & Toddler training. While the internet has many resources, there is no substitute – no videos or manuals – that can replace the training. So while I think you probably can educate yourself somewhat, and learn to use many of the materials, it’s a good idea to try and take the Montessori Infant & Toddler training at some point. There are some great options online, like The North American Montessori Training Center.
Just re-found this wonderful post (I’d read it when it was originally posted – but now I have something to add
).
Keys of the Universe is now offering AMI-based elementary Montessori training (so 6-12), primarily for homeschoolers, but I’ve had a few teachers join us as well. We are still in the early months, so there is a lot yet to come. Right now we have portions of albums available monthly (so that you can get started right away in a variety of areas), permanent discussion board shared by all participants regardless of their join-date, homeschool support, discount to downloadable files (more added weekly), and access to a mentor whenever needed.
In the end, I hope that we can provide a very comprehensive, homeschool-user-friendly elementary Montessori “training” – affordably
Hi, Jessica! Sounds great, thanks so much for sharing that info!
Have been reading copious amounts of info regarding Montessori teaching. While loving it I must admit that my head is spinning a bit.
We have three boys aged 4, 6 and 8, that will begin home schooling in 2012 as we are moving to a remote farm. I have looked at the NAMC albums and am very impressed. The cost is considerable but I can use the 6-9 albums for both the older boys and of course for the little one in time, (please correct me if I am wrong). I have looked at the home schooling program that NAMC have compiled. Although it looks wonderful, I have already made some materials, sand paper letters, moveable alphabet etc and I thought that I might just buy the language and maths 3-6 albums individually instead. What do you think?
In addition to the albums I was wanting to purchase your complete curriculum CD, and using the basic essentials classrooms list, gather the necessary hands-on materials. Will these purchases complement each other and will I in fact be able to achieve a Montessori based home school education for our boys in your opinion?
Just to clarify, with the purchase of your complete CD I have access to ALL the PDF files that you sell, suitable for ages 3-9? I love how you use photographs in your materials as opposed to clip art. The files I have viewed are beautifully presented.
I appreciate your time and want to express much gratitude for your site and the wealth of information you share.
Hi, Siobhan! Sounds like you are doing a great job of researching Montessori and I think it’s going to be wonderful! I’m a little jealous of the farm part
Yes, since you’ve made some materials yourself I think you’d be fine just buying some albums. You can indeed use them for a long and for as many children as you need – they’re guides for you, not consumables.
If you purchase my Complete CD, you will have materials for ages 2-12, some can even be used up to age 15. You can see all of our 9-12 materials here.
Our materials and NAMC’s are very complimentary. You should have no problems using them together. Many of their students and graduates are my customers
I hope that helps! Thanks for stopping by.
Good morning,
Thank you so much. I purchased the complete CD from you yesterday and am really excited anticipating its arrival! I will follow up on the albums.
Here in Australia we have just had a national curriculum written that unifies the countries education system. I was excited when hearing from Montessori Australia that Montessori is in the processes of having its own curriculum approved by our national government as a parallel alternative. It was not a matter of rewriting the materials of course. Rather, outlining to those not familiar with the teaching that the children are in fact receiving the necessary education in all areas to make it a viable alternative.
We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to be moving. I think it will be a really enriching experience for our family.
Will certainly be back again!
Siobhan
Hi, Siobhan! Thank you so much for your purchase. I know you will love the CD.
Very interesting information about the national government approving the Montessori curriculum! It is definitely a viable alternative