Many years ago I taught at Midwest Montessori School, the school that was run by the Midwest Montessori Teacher Training Center. Because it was a training center school, our classroom was visited by many Montessori teachers and interns.
One thing I noticed was that any people who visited were very interested in the set up and layout of the materials on the shelves. It seems that no matter how long you’ve been doing Montessori, there’s always a new way to arrange the work.
In our language area, the Pink, Blue, and Green Series work was grouped by color. There was one long shelf of Pink Series work; directly underneath that was a long shelf of Blue Series work, and under that, a shelf of Green Series work (I plan to do a post for Blue and Green Series soon).
At the far left of each shelf was a basket of objects that matched the color scheme. The objects were used for more than one work (matching to printed cards, spelling with movable alphabet, and story writing). Next to the basket was all the other work for that color – matching cards, pictures, rhyming work, word lists, and spelling cards.
Because I’m in the process of moving, I don’t have all my materials with me, but I did take some pictures that could be helpful. Here you’ll see a tray (lined with pink paper) and some pink series objects; You can also use a basket, and line it with pink felt or pink fabric instead:
Objects are (l-r, t-b): cup, pan, bug, pot, can, jar, tag (cut from cardstock), and hat
They can be used for spelling with the movable alphabet:
The objects can also be used for matching to printed labels (make some in Word and print on pink cardstock, or just handwrite them on pink cards):
For a look at all my Pink Series pictures, with helpful captions, please visit my Montessori Facebook page!