"The materials, learning environment, and personalized instructional approach are key components of the Montessori pedagogy. In fact, wherever one finds themselves in the world, a Montessori classroom can be easily identified by the many shared environmental features, including the instructional materials designed by Dr. Montessori to enhance students' learning and development in math, practical life, sensorial, cultural, and language domains. Rather than textbooks and worksheets, the classroom serves as a living curriculum."
- Powerful Literacy in the Montessori Classroom
We love Montessori materials! Any opportunity to work with them gets us very excited and as you'll see it's hard to contain the joy they bring us. Hands-on activities encourage meaningful learning experiences and we've got some great options to share with you for elementary and below.
Read on for Montessori materials that teach the phonetic alphabet, animal homes, animal groups, metric measures, poetry, and more. Be sure to check out our elementary resources for books and curriculum ideas.
How to Homeschool Elementary
A Family-Style Approach to the Montessori Great Lessons
Free Montessori Great Lessons Series
Do you want assistance with planning your year? We've put together a FREE series on the Great Lessons for elementary and family-style learning that will take the overwhelm out of the beginning of your school year and keep you moving with ease all the way to spring.
Explore the Montessori Great Lessons, the introduction to the Cosmic Curriculum, traditionally given to Elementary students near the beginning of the school year. This free 5-part weekly email series will help you tell the story of how our universe began all the way to the origins of language and numbers.
Montessori's Five Great Lessons provide children with a contextual understanding of who they are, where they come from, and their unique purpose or cosmic task. Sounds like a big undertaking, right? Well, it doesn't have to be.
Learn more about this elementary homeschool course.
Montessori Materials
Some of the products mentioned below were borrowed and some were given to us free of charge in exchange for an honest review.
All of the materials described below are from The Albanesi Educational Center.
The Phonetic Alphabet
This phonetic alphabet exercise is a must-have Montessori material for anyone learning to read. It is used alongside the sandpaper letters to reinforce knowledge of the phonetic sounds of letters.
My favorite thing about this phonetic alphabet is that the letters are positioned between two ruled lines. I don't see this as often and it's an excellent way to extend the learning as kids begin to form their letters on lined chalkboard or paper.
Katalina's favorite part is the large colorful picture cards. She spent a fair amount of time just sifting through the picture cards and talking about how much she loves them.
If your child is new to sandpaper letters, you can complete some or all of this activity with the child, demonstrating how to match the picture cards to the letter. I stick to the letters that correspond to the sandpaper letters they're currently working with when just starting out.
Katalina has been working with sandpaper letters for a while so she likes to lay out the letters in the order of the alphabet and then mix up the picture cards to match.
Be sure to work with this phonetic alphabet in a location where you can spread out since the cards are a decent size.
Kids can check their answers using the handy control booklet included in the activity.
Animal Homes
The homes of the animals activity is a riot if you're in the right mood. The kids were all over it, matching the label to the picture and then completing the sentence with the name of the animal's home.
Again, Katalina loved the large picture cards! A lot of time was spent laughing as Kaia & Noah mixed up the sentences and expanded upon their ideas, using their imaginations to fuel creative ideas.
Afterward, they check their work using the control booklet.
Collective Nouns for Animal Groups
The groups of the animals activity also has the potential to spiral into giggles, especially when they also are working in a group.
Similar to the homes of the animals, this exercise includes matching the animal label to the picture and then completing the phrase with the collective noun that matches.
When you or your siblings have recently had a tiger face painting session, this lesson really hits home.
If your kids like animals like mine do, these animal activities are sure to generate interest.
Poetry
The poetry exercises are phenomenal! There are 14 different sets to work with so there are a large variety of topics you can cover depending on your child's interest.
My kids reached for cats, dinosaurs, and pyramids first, but you could also follow the order in which they are numbered if you're looking for a more, well, orderly approach.
The dinosaurs set pairs well with Montessori's second great lesson and the timeline of life. It also provides the perfect opening for teaching about pteranodons and other pterosaurs and whether or not they're actually dinosaurs at all.
I already fell down that rabbit hole so I'll spare you the suspense. Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs. Neither are plesiosaurs. I know they end in -saur. Just move on and grab some dinosaur books your kids are sure to love.
The pyramids poetry set would tie in perfectly with the third great lesson for elementary as you explore ancient civilizations.
The armored animals set would go well with biology units or when exploring external parts of animals during the second great lesson.
Other sets include communication, homes, special clothing, and more. Each one has its own control book for self-checking.
Metric Measures: Measurement of Length, Mass, & Volume
For learning about measurement of length, mass, and volume, as well as temperature conversion check out these metric measures exercises. If, like us, you mostly work with the Imperial system of measurement in your daily life you'll want these materials.
You may find it helpful to start with a lesson on the Imperial vs the Metric system and why it's important to understand both. Fields of study that operate in metric and travel outside of the U.S. are just two scenarios.
After the picture cards are displayed in order, the kids can match the metric label to the appropriate picture. Noah found it helpful to organize the labels by unit and then he moved from smallest to largest (and lightest to heaviest for measurements of mass) placing the labels under the pictures as he worked.
Using the control book to check their answers provides valuable insight and maybe a few laughs once they see how they did.
The metric measures of length, mass, and volume can all be completed using the same process so once kids have done one, they're off and running with the other two.
The picture cards are very attractive and generate a lot of interest.
There is a lot of ordering and sequencing that naturally takes place as kids work through the sets of cards.
Also included with the metric measures exercises are three charts with labels for matching the name with its abbreviation and meaning as well as conversion charts for temperature, length, mass, and capacity.
We hope you've enjoyed seeing some of the Montessori materials The Albanesi Educational Center has to offer. If you have any questions or want to know more about any of these materials let us know in the comments.
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