Making It Up

as we go along

binomial cube

Getting hands on with Montessori education

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So, last week I took delivery of a very large box of Montessori materials from the lovely Anne-Marie from Child Led Chaos. And this week I started to get the resources out.

The first one out of the box was the Trinomial Cube (amazon), for no other reason than both Big and I adore it. Turns out that that is catching, as Smallest has spent hours with it already. As it contains the binomial cube, you can start by presenting that (some hints on trinomial presentation here here although that’s not quite how I do it), so I did, and it took her just two days to get the hang of that. (Not all of two days. Although I would guess she probably spent a good couple of hours on it, having me present it over and over, and trying a variety of ways to get it to fit before she cracked it.)

binomial cube

As soon as she’d got the hang of the binomial, she wanted to do the big cube. So we had a few goes at that.

trinomial cube

I foresee many more hours with that one 🙂

And before all this had started, of course we had to clean down the table after breakfast, and sweep the kitchen floor so that it’s clean for the mat to be rolled out. Lots of incidental good habits in Montessori practices. After only a couple of days of it, she already rolls the mat up and puts it away without being reminded.

Tigerboy is loving all the new stuff as well. He’s spent a lot of time with the Latches Board (amazon) although oddly I don’t seem to have any pictures of him with that. But his real favourite is the Tower! (always with a !) which in this case is a not pink tower. It isn’t a classic montessori version of this, being natural, and nesting, rather than being solid blocks. This does make it more complicated to work with, as it’s possible to hide a block as you’re building the tower. He doesn’t seem to mind.

not pink tower

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of materials, but already, just a couple of days into use, I can see that both the little ones are responding so well to having the montessori influence brought into the home. It gives me a structure as well, which is good, and I’m really looking forward to reorganising the living room, so that we can have shelving with the materials available for easy access. For the time being, I’m getting them out early on a morning and putting them on the kitchen table, which means the children have to ask me for them, not ideal, but a lot better than having Tigerboy disappear with an important part!

If you’d like to read more about montessori, try our homemade spindle box or a post about Montessori methods and the materials

Montessori moments – the method and the materials

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This wekk in one of the home ed groups I’m in, someone asked about Montessori books for home ed. I went digging around on Amazon (shh) and found that you can get Montessori Play and Learn : A Parents’ Guide to Purposeful Play from Two to Six for as low as 1p plus postage secondhand. And then I found The Montessori Method on Kindle for only 72p. Bargain.

I suspect with those two books, you could get a pretty good understanding of the theory, and the practice, of Montessori. The best way to learn it is hands on, of course, given that’s how it works. It’s hands on 😉

The idea is quite simple. Children learn by doing, by exploration, by getting stuck in. Montessori is *not* a teaching system – there are no passive recipients of knowledge. It’s designed (and yes, I do mean designed) for a completely different outcome. The materials are meant to be self correcting, so once the use of the material has been demonstrated, the child can then get on with using it with very little further input, and learn from the use.

binomial cube

What does that mean? Well, for some things, like the trinomialor binomial cubes, you can tell you’ve done it right because when you’re done it fits back in the box 🙂 (The cube can be used for teaching algebra. That bit isn’t usually discussed at age 3 or 4 though.)

spindle box

Or with the spindle box, there are exactly the right number of spindles. So if you run out before the end, or you’ve got any left over, then you’ve done it wrong. You can buy montessori materials, as you can see, but lots of them are very expensive.

You can also make them. When Maria Montessori was doing all of this, wood was the material of choice, and I suspect the materials were effectively cheap and cheerful, as well as being extraordinarily hard wearing, and forgiving of multiple use. In our throwaway world, plastic is the thing, and we think everything needs to be brightly coloured. Montessori materials tend not to be brightly coloured, so as not to have colours distracting from the purpose of the material.

For my spindle box, I’m collecting toilet roll tubes and lolly sticks. (45 lollies. In a family of 6 going through a pack of 12 mini gellatos from Lidl a week, that’s not going to take terribly long.) This means my material is going to be cardboard and wood – not so very far from the original. I’ll cut the tubes in half and fit them into a box – maybe a shoebox lid if I can find one big enough. Or maybe I’ll just fold cardboard to make the divisions – I haven’t quite decided yet.

home made spindle box

What do you think – does it look like it will work? I’ll be back with pictures when it’s done, and I’ll also demonstrate the lesson. (I am actually a qualified and experienced montessori directress. And I’ve got a couple of children to demonstrate with 😉 )

I think Montessori is a wonderful method of education, and I’m sure it’s going to suit both Smallest and Tigerboy down to the ground. Look out for more posts on individual lessons, materials and general waffling coming very soon.

Amazon links are affiliate links. Other bookstores are available for example, here’s Montessori’s Own Handbook or Absorbent Mind at Hive (also affiliate).