Well that was me in the beginning. Coming from a tiny place in Ontario Canada, I had a bit of a time building my confidence to make more expensive purchases from the US. Here are some places I have purchased from and had amazing luck and service...
My favorite for all round quality, service and great prices especially reasonable shipping was from
Kid Advance in the US. Now we also have things shipped to Ogdensburg to save shipping costs since these types of materials are duty free. It's a short trip over for pickup, and can save so much on shipping.
Alison's Montessori was really reliable and has some great prices. IFIT Montessori Equipment is amazing and has incredible customer service - I think they are in BC. The Montessori Outlet Canada has great prices as well. I do also really like Adena Montessori they have given me such great service, and the product has been wonderful. I have ordered from Caliber, and that was good - got a great clearance puzzle map that was awesome. Grandpa's Montessori was great for some things. There is also a company in Toronto called Affordable Montessori, and I am actually ordering math equation boxes from them because they have a great price on them and shipping - they are also very nice. Basically (not to sound a bit obsessed but...) I keep a spreadsheet of what I want and need and a list of my fav suppliers across the top, list out their prices and go from there. Dollar stores are always a fav as well all hardware and building supply stores.
Happy shopping!!!
Just another quick addition...I am about to start getting our continent boxes together, and will be ordering some really great cultural resources from Montessori N' Such. I am very impressed with the prices and selection. I also love the continent package from Montessori for Everyone (printables - they are so awesome). So that's it for now...:))
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Color Boxes 1 &2 and Color Matching game
These were quite easy to do. I cut the wood squares out of lattice moulding and sanded the edges really well. I picked doubles of paint chips from the store, and used wood glue to adhere the chips to the wood. I put the chips between two pieces of wood and clamped them together to make sure they stuck evenly to the wood. When they were dry I placed them color side down, and trimmed them with a very sharp exacto knife.
The color matching game was inspired by one that they sell on most Montessori sites. I took plywood pieces and cut them to length, and then wood glued paint chip strips (tried to find extra wide ones so that I could cut away any writing) to them. I clamped and trimmed these the same way as above. I next cut large dowels into short lengths, and sanded. I took the leftover pieces of paint chips and glued them to the tops of the dowels – clamped them between wood and trimmed after dry. I do really like how this turned out. The backs are numbered for self-correction.
I did decide to purchase color box three, and it is so gorgeous!! Making box 3 would have put me over the edge…lol.
Land & Water Trays
This is a project I was inspired to make from another blog mom – hers looked so awesome!! These were kind of fun to make. I bought the trays from the dollar store. I decided to try and mould the sides in modeling clay and then to pour the moulds with plaster. This worked amazingly well. When it dried, I simply pulled away to clay, and it left behind clean crisp moulds. I spray primed the entire trays really well. Then I sprayed them blue, and finally gave them a few clear coats to be sure they were water tight. I did buy the wood sandpaper cards, and printed the nomenclature. You can see that we also construct our own out of play dough in trays to further this work.
Land & Water Nomenclature Cards can be found for free here & here & here and command/lesson cards here also.
You can make the sandpaper cards or you can purchase them for $18 here.
Should you want to buy these you can find them reasonably priced here.
This is a fantastic blog with diy Geography materials!!!
You can find lots of great activities to add in from here.
Land & Water Nomenclature Cards can be found for free here & here & here and command/lesson cards here also.
You can make the sandpaper cards or you can purchase them for $18 here.
Should you want to buy these you can find them reasonably priced here.
This is a fantastic blog with diy Geography materials!!!
You can find lots of great activities to add in from here.
Constructive Triangles
Triangular Box # 3
This work again was not too hard, but tons of work. I printed the triangles from a free site and cut them all out to trace them. Strangely enough, I keep anything that I think I can reuse in some constructive way stored in the garage, and we happened to have some Masonite from a dresser backing. It was smooth on both sides so therefore easy for the kiddo’s to slide around. My husband cut while I traced – we worked on one box at a time so as not to confuse things. Then I spayed them all in the correct (or as close to) colors. Then there was the business of getting the black lines on. I found 1/4" black automotive pin striping from Canadian Tire (extremely durable, approx 6 or $7), and cut it to fit. I love how these turned out.
A few links to check out for information regarding the boxes... look here and here and here. The printouts are from free from here .
A few links to check out for information regarding the boxes... look here and here and here. The printouts are from free from here .
The Broad or Brown Stair, Pink Tower & Extension work
Well...I asked my amazing husband to make the Pink Tower & Brown Stair for us. He did an incredible job!! I will say that while this was no terribly difficult to make it was very fussy and time consuming - but very rewarding. We used some new and scrap lumber that required lots of laminating and piecing to get the correct dimensions when cut down. Tons of sanding and spray painting later and voila!! Now you can also leave these natural if you so desire...many are sold that way as well - I just chose to paint them. To see one in unfinished wood look here .
For a great explanation and lessons for these materials check here and here.
I printed all of the extensions and made a couple with construction paper Bristol board and my favorite all time thing I found on another super mom's blog...clear contact paper by the roll at Walmart for 10bucks!!! You can laminate durably - a ton of print work...love it!!
I did purchase the cubes and prisms extensions from Alison's Montessori (great price)- for later use.
Montessori Print Shop has many amazing sonsorial extensions and command/activity cards.
Number Rods & Red Rods
I will try to post a better pic later. These were pretty simple to make but you need to take care with dimensions. The painting of these was a lot of work (for me anyway), I don't mean hard just very time consuming. I used spray paint (oil) and I did use very good quality low tact tape. I sprayed both sets and the taped off for the blue segments. I also made the number cards from wood ply again and red vinyl numbers.
Make Introduction To The Decimal System cards & presentation information
Introduction To The Decimal System cards that we made. Be bought the Quantity Demonstration Tray and Decimal System Introduction Tray here - a less expensive version can be bought here. The Montessori Primary Guide has a great explanation and lessons for this work here. I thought it would be easy to make the ply number cards. Again scrap project plywood and vinyl letters. We also made a small box from scrap wood to hold them. Here is also a great video of an early presentation of this work.
The quantities can be laid out later on a place value mat you can purchase here or easily make yourself. This work is very important in that is begins their Golden Bead journey, and understanding of physical quantities of the base ten number system (relationship of numbers 1-1000).
Teens & Tens Boards
I had a hard time finding thin plywood to work with. We bought ours from Wallack's Art Supply, Ottawa.
We were able to get the strip width we wanted and cut them to length. The dividers are (lol) bamboo chopsticks that we cut to size and glued on. I had a sheet of numbers for various projects done for me at a local sign shop to make things easier and very durable. I do need to glue on the small pieces on top of the sticks to allow the number chips to be slid in and out for now we just set them in and it works just fine that way. I could have made them bigger but...
We made the box because it’s hard to find custom boxes at the ready for these things, and the boxes for the materials we make are actually very very simple. I use lattice moulding, cut the various pieces and clamp and glue. The number cards are from Michaels Crafts - you can buy little project packs of plywood that you cut to the size needed, and then I put on the vinyl lettering. I did buy the box of beads for the teen board and added the unit beads to it, so we could just use it for both.
We are building our bead cabinet today!!!
I am so excited to get this built. So far I have the short chains, squares, cubes and 100&1000 chains I will get the rest soon. I am so looking forward to getting this cab setup. Ours will be a different dimension than the original cab size as we have space constraints. I will post pics when it’s together. I am working on uploading pics of many materials we have made, but did not realize how slow pic loading is on Blogger :(
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Getting started…
We decided to home school for various reasons, and a very bad PS experience did not help matters.
The most important thing to me/us is that we love our children, home school and Montessori.
I want to say off the hop that I am learning as I go – I am not a Montessori expert. I am continually reading and researching the method. My children are 2 & 5 so we are finding our way through this together. I bought a set of the 3-6 manuals/ albums from Montessori Research and Development. We have made many materials, and also bought a large amount. I have spent a significant amount of time piecing this puzzle and have had many challenges, rewards and some setbacks trying to incorporate this learning method in our home. I have poured over the blogs of other Montessori moms out there and am so grateful they have chosen to be so honest, and share their experience knowledge and materials with the world.
I would also love to share some of what we have created here in our home for our children. The materials we have made are our interpretations of many of the amazing materials we have seen others make. I am continually inspired by Montessori & home school moms everywhere.
As I said our setup is not perfect, and I am still trying to find ways of practically housing the materials and creating a “children’s house” within our home. I have decided though that “it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just has to be”.
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