I’m going to make a Montessori thread today with some of my favorite lessons we have in our room. I’ll try to add some for the younger kiddos too!

So Montessori is split key areas for learning: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Mathematics, and Culture. Let’s start with practical life

Practical Life: Basically anything that prepares them for things they’ll encounter every day.

Lessons: boards with buttons, zippers, buckles, pouring water from a pitcher, sweeping (a small handheld sweeper sweeping mables into the dustpan), flower arranging, ...

Folding small towels, peeling a banana, using chopsticks, color sorting, sorting fruits vs veggies, watering a plant, the list goes on.

Find something age appropriate. These don’t have to be expensive. For a color sorting lesson I went to dollar tree and got a divided party

Dish and some multi color pom poms. Added a pair of small tongs and boom. Flower arranging-dollar tree aluminum vase and flowers. My kids LOVE that lesson. A lot of things you have at home or can hit up dollar tree. It’s not all wood expensive stuff it’s about the experience

Sensorial. This is a big one especially for the younger ones. These typically are where you do find your wooden things but it’s worth the money because there’s no age limit. 1 year to 5 years they’ll be used. So blocks (one solid color), cylinder blocks, puzzles, stacking cups

Exposure to different shapes and patterns. Try to get them to copy patterns or challenge them to build the blocks in a certain way (copy a picture)

Language. Sandpaper letters! You can buy these or make them honestly. Just make sure you have a smooth surface/wood and make the letters textured (usually sandpaper) get your child to trace the letters with their fingers and name letters (you can do this with numbers too)

Sequence (so pictures of someone making a sandwich. What happens 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc), letter bracelets (shoe string and beads with letters on them, make a basket with things that start with a specific letter and let them explore, fill a tray with sand and let them trace letters

Mathematics—the 100 board (for older kids), make a board with nails in it and add some rubber bands and challenge them to copy shapes (pictures of shapes for reference), number cups— make cups with numbers and get popsicle sticks— show them one stick goes in 1, two sticks go in 2

and so on, make trees with numbers and have them glue how many leaves tree says goes on it, trace numbers in the sand, I mean really you can hand make a ton of this stuff!!

Culture- getting puzzles with the different continents, a globe, printing out a picture of a continent and animals that live there and having them place them on the continent, having bins of continent with things specific to the culture, pictures of kids in different

Cultures and where they come from, using play dough of different colors to put on top of a map to distinguish different continents.

We have a science section too in our classroom one of the kids favorites. Moon phases using Oreos, get baby food jars and put water, grass, and nothing (water, land, air) and print pics of animals and have them sort where they live, sequence life cycles, put a cup of water and

Different objects and do sink vs float categoies. For the younger ones make a basket of outdoor things with a magnifying glass and let them explore. The possibilities are endless

Truly you can make a lot of things. Sensorial things are worth spending money on but Melissa and Doug make GREAT reasonably priced Montessori toys for all ages. Dont be afraid to hit up your local dollar tree & make lessons. These IG moms make it sound $$$- it doesn’t have to be

Lmk if you have any questions

@Beachedariel tagging you for later