I would recommend using a math album, although the online math albums I link to in this post are great. Go with what you can afford, make as many things by hand as possible, improvise, and most of all, don’t worry. Buy things a few at a time so that you don’t overdo your budget.

Take a look at the Montessori Basics post Essentials of an Elementary Classroom to see which math materials I think are the most important.

But, after, presenting, I let him be the judge of whether to do the work or not. Sometimes a few weeks would go by without any math work. I never made him feel like it had to be done.

Now, if I had put math work out and he never, ever chose it, I would have had to tell him to do it at some point. But I would have done that in a non-threatening, low pressure, “hey just wait until you see this because it’s sooooo cool” sort of way.

Also, the materials can be used on so many different levels depending on the age/ability of the child.

I’ve always said that I wish I had the Binomial and Trinomial Cubes when I took algebra – what a difference that would have made!

I also like to use a wide variety of math activities, like board games, books about math, CDs with math songs, DVDs, and computer games like Math Blaster.