I’m following up the Montessori Basics post with my sons’ favorite sensorial works.  If you’re setting up a small area to use the Montessori principles in your home, this is a great place to start.  Montessori materials can be expensive, especially if you get the highest quality available.  I recommend using Montessori materials as birthday, Christmas and other holiday gifts.  If you start your child young, they won’t even miss the flashing, light-up plastic toys.  I even recommend the grandparents to give these educational gifts instead.  To be completely honest, the binomial cube was the gift all of the children were most interested in at John Robert’s 5th birthday.  Everyone wanted to use it immediately!  And this was with non-Montessori educated children!

Start with one or two materials and slowly work your way through them.  The knobbed cylinders are by far the most expensive.  Some of the materials you can make by hand.

Descriptions of photos above, from left to right, top to bottom:

Pink Tower: Buy the Kid Advance version for $34.99 or make it yourself like this post from A Handmade Childhood.

Red Rods: Buy the Kid Advance version for $34.99 or make it yourself following the tutorial I did for the Handmade Number Rods, just paint them all red instead of alternating blue and red.

Brown Stairs (shown with the pink tower):  Buy the Kid Advance version for $59.99.  Does anyone have a good link for a tutorial to hand make the brown stairs?

Sound Cylinders: Buy the Alison’s Montessori version for $25.00 or make them yourself using my Sound Matching post.  These are really easy and inexpensive to make.

Knobless Cylinders: Buy the Kid Advance version for $49.99.

Knobbed Cylinders: Buy the Kid Advance version for $119.99

To find more information on how to use the sensorial materials, visit my sensorial category here or use the search bar in the upper right corner to search a specific material.

These are my sons’ favorite sensorial materials, what are your child’s?