Elementary Montessori Materials Continue into Adolescence

Montessori materials truly go DEEP. Perhaps Montessori didn't have time to develop every detail from birth to college, but she left us an outline and some people have been able to follow Dr. Montessori's trailblazing style. 

Looking at the Elementary and/or Primary Materials used into Montessori Adolescent Algebra

• Geometry Sticks
• Fraction Circles (metal works fine, but the plastic materials with the multiplies of each fraction family from 1 to 1/10 – you do NOT need or want the children to use fraction segments beyond 1/10)
• Bead bars, squares and cubes from the bead cabinet (“complete bead material”)
• Wooden cubing material
• Power of 2 (Power of 3 if you purchased that too – or just make one)
• Pythagorean Insets
• Binomial Cube
• Multiplication Checkerboard
• Pegboard (ensure it is sized to your geometry sticks – so they all align properly – this generally means holes that are 1 cm apart from one another)
• Yellow Area Material
• Large and small geometric solids
• Number/operations tiles – with some additions, including adding in the fraction labels as well (called Special Math Symbols on the adolescent album)
• Set of 12 blue right-angled triangles

For review purposes:

• Decanomial bead bar box (called “large bead bar box” in the album)
• Constructive triangles

Montessori Phonograms - Key Sounds

In the English language, there are 16 "key" phonograms: 

ai, er, ie, ee, or, ue, oo, qu, th, ch, oy, sh, ou, oa, ar, au

All others are variations on these ;) 

The sandpaper letter phonograms

The sandpaper letters phonograms should be introduced at the same time as the individual sandpaper letters - learn 3-5 individuals, then introduce a phonogram; continue introducing one new one at a time with individuals in between such that all sandpaper letters, individual and phonogram, are finished up at about the same time - typically 3 weeks after beginning the first sandpaper letters ;)

In this way, the children can immediately write anything with the movable alphabet, without needing prompts or guides as to what they can write versus what they have not yet learned - they'll have learned it all!