Have you made hand-made Montessori materials or other homeschool manipulatives?

Question

Please share details of things you have made, links, or any other info that could be useful.

Answer 1

I made the color tablets myself - for free!  Just use paint samples.  I also made the rough and smooth boards using strips of sandpaper of different textures.  There's a book called Teach Me To Do It Myself that has a lot of really good ideas for making your own materials.

Answer 2

Language materials are probably the ones that are the easiest for you to make yourself. Cut pictures out of a magazine, an old calendar, or any other source of pictures of objects in different categories. For example, collect a set of pictures of fruits and vegetables, animals, or a set of people in different professions (a picture of a doctor, a construction worker, a mailman, a chef, etc). You can then write out the names of these objects on separate cards and play a "matching" game. If your child is not reading words yet, just speaking the words as they identify the subject of the picture really helps develop the vocabulary.

Of course, books are always great, here's a list of some good children's books: http://www.hopewellmontessori.com/Websit...

There are more complex materials that are true Montessori materials that you can make at home, here are some examples:

http://www.montessorimaterials.com/FreeD...

Answer 3

For science once we made a "buzzing board", if you touched the correct two points at the same time with a wire you completed the circuit and it would buzz.  (Of course we used a battery, not household electricity.) Making it taught my kids about electric circuits and conductors, and afterward I used it with my youngest child by putting different items to match on the appropriate places on the board (for instance, a picture of a ball and the word "ball")  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, but directions for it can be found in the book "1-2-3 Science."

Answer 4

My sister used to teach at a montessori school that went away do to lack of funding [e-mail]

Answer 5

A search for Montessori materials came up with this site http://www.montessorimaterials.org/ which also has a link to something else to help make materials.