Making Montessori Objects for Reading

sculpy

We have our sandpaper letters, our movable type and a little carpet. Lou is eager to kick reading in gear. Now all we need are some Montessori Objects for reading.

These are usually things Montessori moms hunt for all over, or they can be bought from Montessori Services. But I didn’t have the patience to hunt like that, and I didn’t think they would have all of the correct words that we wanted. I did however have a big block of Sculpey laying about.

list

A while ago I made this list. It collected dust on my desk for months. It’s day had come. We began sculpting.

sculpting

The kids were eager to help, but in their own way. Sometimes contributing to the characters, sometimes creating flowers…

flowers

I made the bulk of the objects, with Lou poking eyes into them or decorating them. Our “hen” got about 50 holes poked in her, which only enhanced her look. As I sculpted I wrapped all tails against the little bodies so they wouldn’t break off:

rat

It took a couple hours to do them all, spread out over a couple days. Then we baked them and painted them.

Painting them was chaos. I did not get any photos because there was paint everywhere. We just went with it, and after painting like crazy the kids moved on to other play while I finished them off. We put them in an old box:

paintedcharacters

Some of the words were hard to sculpt, like “hot” which we made a fire for. Ham was also an odd one. Lou had never seen an actual leg of ham so she made a flat blob which we painted redish-brown. Appetizing. (above the fan, middle right)

My favorite however was the Ant. He’s got an indifferent smile and lopsided eyes.

ant

Here’s a much bigger list that we shall tackle one day: Montessori For Everyone’s Words

And here’s how they use them: Setting up Pink Series Work

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Mom

May 10th, 2010 at 10:31 pm

this is just an amazing endeavor! I love it. Couldn’t really see the ant, but I get the drift. Next time you’re at Target, pick up a Boggle game. The little letter cubes would make endless combinations for words.

My Boys' Teacher

May 11th, 2010 at 8:11 am

Great job! I have made some of my own Montessori objects out of sculpey in the past as well…a vulcano and a ham of all things.

Most Montessori Mom’s don’t think about the pink series when they start collecting their objects, they are just thinking about beginning sounds. I wish that I had collected pink series objects instead, they would have served both purposes. I am always telling people that now and am glad for this post, I think it will be influential. Love it!

Vanessa

May 11th, 2010 at 11:14 am

Today was the first time we tried an activity with the new objects. It was a little bumpy at first, but not bad for our first attempt. It’s hard to get a child who does whatever she wants with stuff to actually use things in a certain fashion.