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

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!

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 26 reviews  4.8 out of 5 stars