DIY Montessori Math Tools

Homeschooling on a tight budget means you get creative. So when I decided to go with a Montessori style classroom for our upcoming school year I had to get creative. I knew I wanted a set of bead bars and bead chains as well as a Stamp Game, Checkerboard, etc...

I began with the bead bars. Nathan and I sat on the floor sorting pony beads into the colors we would need.
Red (1's), Green (2's), Pink (3's), Yellow (4's) Light Blue (5's), Purple (6's), White (7's), Brown (8's) , Blue (9's), Gold/Orange (10's).
 It was a tedious project but got them sorted and helped re-enforce the color scheme for him.

I finished the bead bars using pipe cleaners. I have a section that contains red, green, and blue heart shaped beads that will be using as skittles when we create our bead boards.  I still need to create the bead squares and cubes to go with the set, but for now this is what I have done. I do have a set of bead chains as well but haven't found a way to hang them yet, I have them in a recycled silver chest currently.

 Next I tackled the stamp game using card stock and clear packing tape. I arranged them into a small wooden drawer box. We have the mat to play the stamp game on. The mat has labels across the top for the columns (Units, Tens, Hundreds, Thousands), and 2 loose black ribbons for creating 2 numbers if we want. We have also used the bead bars instead of the tiles on the mat with success.

 Finally the Checkerboard I used felt and a recycled burlap coffee sack. 

We are using the number tiles from a SMATH game I picked up at Goodwill.