There are so many beautiful materials, it’s hard to choose. Still, it was fun to sit down and try to narrow it down to my ten most favorite…the ones I wish I could have worked with when I was a kid!
10. The Sandpaper Letters – brilliantly enabling children to see, touch, and say (hear) a phonetic sound. It doesn’t matter what your learning style is, these have got you covered.
9. The Movable Alphabet – what a great idea! The first time I heard of it – without seeing it – I thought, “An alphabet that moves? How can that be?” Sure enough, it does.
8. The Golden Beads/Bead Stair – math has never been so hands-on or so satisfying. Plus, the beads can be used for truly endless types of math activities.
7. Pouring & Scooping Work – the perfect intersection of the child’s own desires, and the acquiring of a life skill. Kids can’t resist it. In fact, the first time I was ever in a Montessori classroom, I couldn’t stop watching while a child made bubbles in a bowl with an egg beater. I had never seen anything so cool in my life!
6. Nomenclature & Classification Cards – hmm, I wonder why I like these so much? I love the fact that Montessori kids can tell you the parts of a volcano, the sun, the moon, and the earth by the age of 5.
5. The Wooden Puzzle Maps – a fantastic way to teach geography, and like so many other Montessori materials, they’re beautiful as well.
4. The Checkerboard – fun, challenging, and clever. I never would have thought this up myself, but it works perfectly.
3. The Triangle Boxes – how I wish I had these in high school during my geometry class! Things would have made so much more sense.
2. The Pink Tower – it’s just so perfectly formed, each block proportionately smaller and smaller. Everything from the color to the shape of it just says “Montessori”.
1. The Binomial & Trinomial Cubes – I’ll never forget when I took the Montessori training, and the teacher was explaining how each side of each cube related to a term in the binomial and trinomial equations. A light bulb went on! I got it! I now understand those equations better than I ever did when I was in school.