frugal montessori

Cognitive Activity: Matching Pairs

September 22, 2009

Age: 12 – 18 months Goal: To lay the foundation for matching skills and to develop concentration. Materials: mat, basket, three pairs (such as shoes, socks, mittens/gloves, animals, cutlery, balls, etc) Prepare the work and get out the mat. With the work facing the child and the mat between you, set the basket to the [...]

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Homemade Child’s Placemat

September 4, 2009

Last week during a few of Joey’s naps I made a few placemats for his eating dishes. I like them and they were really simple to make. I just traced the dishes and silverware on a plain piece of cardstock, cut them out, glued them to an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of cardstock, and then [...]

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Treasure Basket: Primary Colors

September 1, 2009

A few weeks ago, I decided to change our treasure basket to reflect the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) over the next few weeks. The plan is to have just one color in the treasure basket for two weeks and then switch to the next color. The last two weeks were red and yesterday [...]

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Cognitive/Motor Activity: Stacking Rings

August 31, 2009

Age: 6 months+ Goal: To develop fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and a sense of order. Materials: mat (Make sure you’re mat is big enough to line the rings on side by side. Mine obviously isn’t. ) , stacking rings or blocks on a dowel (or like object) Presentation Prepare the work and get out [...]

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Infant/Toddler Montessori Activities

August 27, 2009

What’s been on our shelf the last few weeks? Check it out: I switched up the work last week as I’ve been preparing new work. It’s been a bit of a trial and error process. I find that I get really excited about a work and then realize that Joey’s not quite ready to handle [...]

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Why use a work mat?

August 20, 2009

Lately, I’ve been thinking about our use of the work mat in our home. I have one rolled up sitting next to one of the work shelves, but honestly sometimes I don’t even use it (big Gasp!, I know…). Joey usually pulls work off the shelf so fast and in quick succession that I’m reshelving [...]

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Homemade Infant/Toddler Montessori Materials

August 13, 2009

Here’s a few pictures of the Montessori materials my husband was making. They still need to be painted and stained, but they look great! I didn’t get the object permanence box with a drawer, but maybe we can figure out something similar. I don’t have pictures of the other activities yet.

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Homemade Infant/Toddler Montessori Materials

July 27, 2009

I love Montessori materials, but sometimes they are just so expensive especially when you’d like to have more than one or two. I’ve been looking for awhile at Montessori Outlet’s Infant/Toddler materials and was planning on buying the Object Permanence box. It’s around $20, but then I found out the shipping would cost $20 and [...]

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