Customer Reviews

Teach Me to Do It Myself: Montessori Activities for You and Your Child

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I also have _Montessori Play & Learn_ and _Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Preschool Years_. This one contains the same type of activities, but somehow makes it seem simpler than the others, and seems to require less complicated special equipment to be bought or made. If you're only going to buy one Montessori book to use with your preschooler, I would recommend this one.

Update: This book is perfect if you just want to do some Montessori-style activities with your preschooler. However, if you want a deeper understanding of the Montessori Method, the materials, and the exercises, I'd suggest you *also* get Basic Montessori (Clio Montessori). That book can be intimidating (see my review), but does give some excellent and in-depth explanations. Use the two together for the best of both worlds.

The Introduction includes: a Preface; "Who was Montessori"; "How to use this book"; and "Frequently asked questions" (seven in all).

There are five chapters with activities you can do at home or in a classroom setting: "Life skills, Developing the senses, Language development, Numeracy skills," and "Science skills."

Each activity has a picture, a numbered list of directions, a list of "You will need," and "Other activities to try." Most activities include a "Tip box," a "Word activity" (language), and a "Safety Point."

In the back of the book are worksheets to use (copy) for making several of the activities shown in the book.

The "Life skills" chapter includes: activities for personal hygiene, dressing, polishing, pouring, spooning, tonging, open close, threading, weaving, sewing cards, and cutting.

The "Developing the senses" chapter includes: activities for exploring textures and objects and learning about shape, size, height, length, color, sound, smell, and taste.

The "Language development" chapter includes: guidelines to help you select books for your child and guidelines for reading to your child; activities for word play, phonics and learning the letters of the alphabet, word building (Moveable Alphabet), and picture cards (Reading Tablets); making phrases, sentences, a diary, a book, a family tree, and a picture poem.

The "Numeracy skills" chapter includes: sorting, counting and learning numbers one to ten, number sequencing, simple addition and subtraction, introducing money, and number songs.

The "Science skills" chapter includes: leaf collecting, flower puzzle, planting, understanding volume, float and sink, the weather, geography including globe and map and land forms, mixing colors, and baking.

Worksheets (in the back of the book) for several of the activities shown in the book:

*Learning height and length (similar to the Number Rods). Make color copies, enlarge them, cut them out.

*Two-dimensional shapes: geometric shapes, in black outline, of circles, squares, and triangles from largest to smallest. Make a copy and cut out shapes or make two copies for matching shapes.

*Identifying letters: alphabet letters in black and white lower case shown on the line. Make copies and cut out. You can also color them in using red and blue markers or colored pencils for the Moveable Alphabet. You can also enlarge them when you make a copy for making the Sandpaper Letters.

*Word building: black and white cards with pictures and three-letter short vowel phonetic words (six cards for each vowel for a total of 30 cards). Copy and cut them out for a Reading Tablets activity, or your own language creation. You can also color the pictures in (recommended).

*Constructing phrases: a list of articles, adjectives, verbs, and prepositions.

*Make a flower puzzle: black and white drawing of a flower, and its parts in labels.

I give this book five stars out of five. It is well organized, full of information, and easy to understand with nice photos and drawings. The activities are those found in Montessori classrooms and can be duplicated at home. I think it is ideal for ages 2 1/2 to 5.

I checked this out of our local library and found it easy to follow, bright and fun to look at with color photos, and full of resources like pages to photocopy in the back. Also, the activities made me really excited about Montessori methods. The math section was especially nice. I am online today to order my own copy because three weeks to borrow it was not long enough!

This is a wonderful book for parents wanting to do basic Montessori activities at home, and it also suggests inexpensive ways to make activities as well. I gave this book one less star because it doesn't tell you what activities are age appropriate. I know all children develop and excel in different ways and times, but a little more guidance would have been helpful.

I am very fond of this book. It is a great guide offering almost "duh!" like activities (things that you would never even think of going out of your way to teach your kids) to do with your toddler in order to help them gain a sense of independence and accomplishment. That said, almost all the activities can be done without going out and buying a whole bunch of materials. I particularly like this book as a mom interested in the Montessori method, but not being able to afford to put my children in the pricey Montessori schools in my area. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it's in colour and has plenty of photos. Also, if there is an activity your child really likes, it has suggestions for other activities similar in nature. I like that the book shows you many of the activities they do, but leaves it up to you how you would like to present them to your kids. The book does not specifically tell you what age range the child has to be in order to present an activity, but it does state in the beginning that it presents the activities in order of being the easier concepts to grasp to the more difficult (specifically chapters 1,2, & 5). The author tells you to use your judgement on what you think your child can handle (for instance if they seem to like counting and maths, they will more likely progress faster with the maths activities. I personally would've liked a generic age range per activity, but I understand the point the author is trying to make. I just like that the author gives us the activities the Montessori schools do, but doesn't require the reader to completely apply the Montessori method. I plan on using this as a reference since I would like to educate my children myself until they reach kindergarten.

We were given the book as a gift and love it! A great variety of fun and educational projects for all ages. The writing is warm and concise and easy for parents and children to follow. We especially enjoyed the science section - filled with fun and imaginative activities to encourage our son's curiousity.

This book is a terrific resource for parents looking to get away from using paper-and-pencil "worksheet" activities with their young children. These activities teach the same early skills (letter and number recognition, patterns, fine motor skills, counting, etc.) using common household items. Each learning activity (Montessori refers to these as "jobs") is presented in a two-paged spread with photos and a bulleted list of items/steps needed to easily create the job. The Montessori concepts of independence, use of manipulatives to learn, organizational skills and self-direction are fostered with these activities. Many homeschooling parents have little time to read the original Maria Montessori texts and figure out how to incorporate her ideas into their teaching. This book does that job for them. Well done!

The cover to this book (in my mind) makes it look like the book and the information in it is dated. This is NOT the case.

This is a wonderful reference for anyone who wants to teach their children using the montessori method at home.

It is filled with ideas on how and what to teach your children using this method along with with full color photographs demonstrating what to do for each activity.

The back has a section that you can copy so you can make your own materials if you don't want to buy the expensive (but beautiful) wooden ones you find online or in stores.

As someone who had only heard of Montessori, this book was an excellent guide in demonstrating how to teach my children using this method.

I borrowed this book at the library and am now ordering it here to have my own copy on hand. I spend a lot of time with my two-year old granddaughter and find that she responds really well to the activities described in this book. I love the Montessori philosophy and methods, and the author presents some of the latter in a very engaging way.

I really like this book. It's very easy to implement. The book is divided into sections: Life Skills, Developing the Senses, Language Development, Numeracy Skills (math), and Science Skills. Each section is filled with easy to implement activities for your 2-5 year old. (My best guess at age appropriateness.)

All of the materials are easy to find at home. She includes a few worksheets in the back (really Parent worksheets) of things to cut out such as number rods, a flower parts puzzle, words for language games, etc.)

I think this book would be great for those who wanted to homeschool their kids for preschool or for those who wished perhaps that their kids could attend Montessori. Using this book plus perhaps "Peak with Books" or just reading some great picture books each day would be more than enough.

Great value. Highly recommended.