How to "Montessori" Without Going Broke (or "The High-Low Montessori Project") Part 1

Almost five years ago I attended a lecture from a world-renowned Montessorian, Dr. Angeline Stoll Lillard.  During the Q & A period I asked her about ways that homeschoolers could set up Montessori classrooms.  I was so bummed when she rebuffed me, saying something like, "That wouldn't make any sense, to spend $10,000....."  Maybe she was thinking of the money spent by schools who buy the fancy schmancy materials and maybe she was thinking of families with just one or two children.  I'm glad to see an explosion of interest in applying Montessori principles at home!

This post is about how to set up your space without going broke and how to know when to buy the "good stuff" and when to get by with substitutes.

The Pink Tower is a no-brainer--you need one of these and I wouldn't try making one myself.  The whole set of Math Bead materials was a jackpot of a steal that was a word-of-mouth, friend-of-a-friend situation where a mom was liquidating her home classroom.  Be patient.  I had been stalking this math material for years and, after researching ways to make the math beads myself, I had concluded that it wasn't worth it for me to take the DIY route.  The shelf in the lefthand side of the photo was on clearance online and I splurged on it because the Knobless Cylinders and Knobbed Cylinders (for which it's made) took up valuable shelf space.  Pink Tower, Math Bead Cubes

How to Save Money So You Can Splurge When You Wanna

It can be overwhelming to put together a Montessori environment.  Where to start?  How to find the space?  How to find the funds to buy the equipment?  (no, don't rob a bank!)  If you do things gradually, what should come first?

These are all great questions, but the answers will be different for each and every one of us.  My youngest is two-and-one-half years old, but I started piecing together Montessori materials almost 10 years ago, long before Pinterest and blogs explained how to make things.  There were some online groups, however, that shared approaches to making your own materials.  The problem is that some materials require such precision to make or they need to stand up to a lot of wear and tear or the cost of raw materials needed (including the cost of schleppage) to make the item is almost equal to the cost of buying it!

There are some works (like Folding Cloths, Cards & Counters, Fabric Matching, and seed sorting) that we were required to make as part of our training at Belmont University.  These homemade works are quite do-able and I still use what I (hastily) made.  Sometime soon I'll write up a DIY post on those. 

This post won't address all of the questions you may have about building up your classroom, but I hope it will serve as a guide to knowing when to splurge on the good equipment and when you can manage with homemade or just substitute.  Keep in mind, though, that there's a reason why it's encouraged to use beautiful materials:  not only are children naturally drawn to them, but--if these materials will be part of your home/life--YOU'LL want them to be non-grody.

Firstly you should know some of the stores that carry materials you can use.  There's:

• Old Time Pottery (baskets, mats/rugs, glassware, things to polish)
• World Market (wood to polish, small pitchers) 
• Target (look in dollar bins for shallow plastic bins, flashcards)
• various Dollar stores (dishracks, decorative shells & stones, kitchenware)
• IKEA (small pitchers, funnels, utensils, glasses, table & stools, floating shelves, etc.) 
• TJMaxx (baskets, shot glasses, kitchen implements)

I think these were from World Market.

Shot glass from TJMax, plate from IKEA

Shallow plastic bin from Target dollar bin, tiny broom and dust pan from either a camping store or from Wal-Mart's camping section, bowl from IKEA

Sometimes I would stay up late drooling over the Fancy Schmancy Montessori catalogs, thinking some day I would have a HUGE garage sale and make enough money to splurge.  But then I learned to use the catalogs as an inspiration or a springboard.  You can copy some of the sets you see, like the polishing work baskets or the Magnetic/Non-Magnetic works, for a fraction of the price.

Substituting can require an even greater level of resourcefulness, one that can be fun if you're a frugalista or have really talented friends.  For instance, I put together my own polishing works (that's one basket for silver polishing, one for bronze, one for wood, and one for shoes).  These require that each basket have a number of tiny square cloths, all the same color but with three different types of fabric.  It was much cheaper for me to pay a seamstress friend with a serger to make one dozen each of the broadcloth, flannel, and terry cloth squares than to buy those.  But when it was impossible for her to find brown terry cloth in the fabric stores, she found a brown bathrobe at a thrift shop and -- viola! -- she made one dozen perfect little cloths for polishing shoes.

If your eyes are glazing over and you don't enjoy the thrill of the hunt, you can simplify.  Try to remember what the essential lesson is for each work and modify accordingly.  This may mean some careful thought.  For example, for a while I thought I could use a set of colorful cardboard nesting boxes to substitute for the Pink Tower.  I suppose I could have even painted the boxes all the same color so that their designs weren't distracting, but still the weight of  each cube was not very different.  Part of the essential lesson of the Pink Tower is that the weight of the cubes varies with their dimensions.  Also, the smallest cube is one centimeter per side and the largest is 10 centimeters per side.  There is an indirect preparation for math embedded in the work, and it also correlates precisely with another work, the Broad Stair.  So it was time to splurge:  I bought the darned thing.

Unfortunately there's no such thing as a Montessori store where you can walk right in and buy a Pink Tower.  And that's one of those items that's truly a BIG PAIN to make from scratch (along with anything that requires serious power tools, really nice wood, and extreme precision).

When it's time to splurge and buy the "real deal" check out these stores online:

• For Small Hands
• Montessori n' Such
• Alison's Montessori
• Montessori Services
• Lord Equipment Company

Toddler table and chair from Lord Equipment Co (I think it can be part of a nesting set).  I've also seen a great post about making a larger IKEA table smaller for children.

As I've said before here, garage sales and thrift stores are a great place to find many items.  Craigslist, eBay and begging for used items from local Montessori schools can be another source.

I bought a set of Knobbed Cylinders on eBay for cheap and it was a mistake.  Some cylinders are difficult to take out or put back in, and one of the knobs came off.  This is something worth buying "for real."  The breakfast-in-bed tray was a Mother's Day gift or something, but comes in handy for floorwork that needs a flat surface.

You can see on the Knobbed Cylinders where I burned the wooden block while trying to sand the opening.  The red cylinders are part of a 4-color set of Knobless Cylinders worth buying.  I think all of my "official bought Montessori materials" were bought from either Alison's, Montessori n' Such or Montessori Services.

Some rules of thumb when setting things up:

• Tools should be child-sized.  These are hard to find!  They have to really work.
• Materials should be easily reached, easily stored (usually on open shelves)
• Test-drive your works before presenting to children for the first time.  You may be surprised to learn that the tray they have to carry across the room is WAY too heavy, even for you.  And even items sold from Montessori catalogs may not be very practical, so beware!

This is great for cutting carrots (paper clip is to give you a sense of scale), though not sharp.  

Imagine my surprise when I found (and splurged!) on this Tupperware set!  Tray from IKEA.

Hodgepodge of sources, including IKEA.

We have a few animal nail brushes......

Table Crumber for cleaning up

This is the right size for small hands

This letter organizer has been used for early readers, note cards for art projects and for cutting boards.  I like to have the small wooden cutting board because the normal-sized ones are really heavy.

Some things you will need a lot of:

• Small plastic trays (normal-sized ones will be unwieldy)
• Baskets of all shapes and sizes

See these earlier posts for more detailed info on garage sales and affordable mats.  You can also look around online for cheap solutions, but be wary of writers who don't have The Big Picture (see my example on the Pink Tower).  This post is helpful, and the author is trained as a Montessori teacher, a teacher within the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program, AND she's raised two kids--all important credentials in my book!  Don't be afraid when things aren't perfect.  One reason I've enjoyed learning about the Montessori philosophy is that it helps me to understand when and how to make substitutions, based on the essential lesson of each work.

This hallway is changed every so often, as you can see in this more recent post on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

The above photo is a great example of how your space may be an amalgam of materials from many different sources (here, the dressing frames were ordered from a Montessori catalog, the floating shelf came from IKEA, I think the ladybug clips to hang artwork came from Land of Nod, and the baskets were from Pier 1 and TJMaxx.  Also visible are some Sandpaper Letters that I probably bought from Alison's or Montessori n' Such and some cheap, hand-me-down melamine shelves that were meant for closet organization.

This hodge-podge works for us!  This is just one hallway of our house, so it doesn't take much imagination to figure out why this blog is called "Montessori Messy"!  But it's an inviting, enriching space for toddlers on the move.

We've accumulated these materials over time--some of them bought for my school 5 years ago, some received as birthday or Christmas presents for the kids, some made by me and some are blatant copycats of works that I saw in catalogs.

NOT a traditional Montessori work:  Scrubbing car mats!  I think the bucket came from Target and the scrub brush was probably from a dollar store.  Small Metal Bucket

This post is too long already, so I'll keep you in suspense regarding some specific substitutions that can save you a bundle!

TO BE CONTINUED......

Child's Kitchen Tools
Shot Glasses
Funnels
Egg Slicer
Toddler Table
Small Broom and Dustpan
Dish Pan
Knobless Cylinders
Child's Safety Scissors
Blunt Tip Scissors
Spring-Action Scissors
Breakfast-in-Bed Tray
Tupperware Pitcher and Tumbler Set
Small Wooden Tray and Large Wooden Tray and Tray Set
Nail Brush
Sponges
Vegetable Brush
Vegetable Peeler
Scrub Brush

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