I haven't posted in quite some time, but I haven't been attending to the internet as much in general for the past few weeks. The main reasons for this are being way more busy than usual and/or being sick. Another area that has seen a major time investment is reading. I finally got my turn with the good Montessori books from my library. A few of them weren't very helpful to me, unfortunately they were the ones I read first. Others may find them helpful so I won't mention them here so as to not bias you. However, I have also found a few to be greatly helpful. Those are Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Pre-School Years by Elizabeth G. Hainstock, How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin and the one I'm reading now, Basic Montessori: Learning Activities for Under-Fives by David Gettman.
I'm also continuing to make materials. Today, 2 of my friends, who will be joining us on occasion, came and helped me assemble some 3 part cards and some environment matching cards. After some investigation and trial and error, I decided to mount the print-outs (mainly from montessorimaterials.org) onto the printed side of cereal boxes. I don't really have the monetary resources to laminate everything and it is still pretty flimsy when laminated. The current style of index card is barely thicker than regular paper so that didn't work either. This is how I came to cereal boxes. I put them on the printed side so the backs would be as plain as possible.
Other than that, I've been going to various stores looking for supplies and gathering things. I still don't know how I'm going to do the classroom set-up or where I'm going to keep things. I'll let you know when I figure it out.
