Oh wow! I was pretty excited when I received an email (also posted on their blog) from Montessori Print Shop saying they are looking for bloggers to review their Montessori products. As I read on further, I was telling myself "I have to review this, I HAVE TO!!!!!" and then I read through their requirements and realised they are looking for someone who love and uses Montessori materials, but they also asked whether you love to blog and include pictures in your blog posts.
FYI, we have been looking around (not actively yet...) for some sort of preschool or learning system for Ben to participate in and I've always been intrigued and very much curious with Montessori methods. So I decided to send them an email to try my luck. Never try, never know right?
Fortunately for me, Jennifer De Sousa from Montessori Print Shop replied my email saying "Thank you for contacting us regarding reviewing our products. I have taken a look at your website (very well done!), and even though it is not specifically a Montessori or Preschool Blog, you definitely have a preschooler in the family! I think you'd be a great Reviewer. I hope you and your son find our Montessori-based products educational and fun."
Oh yeah!! Coolness! I immediately replied with my 3 choices of their Montessori materials which are: Alphabet Cards, Color Books (11 books) and Vehicle Match-Up and Memory Game. Although Montessori Print Shop gave me the 3 materials I requested, I only have to review 1 of them as the other 2 are a bonus for my effort. Woohoo!
Excerpts from the Montessori Print Shop website:
"Montessori Print Shop was founded in January 2004 and is located in Ontario, Canada. Montessori schools, private and public schools, as well as homeschooling families from 6 continents have benefited greatly from the wide range of Montessori materials that we have developed.
Our Montessori materials product line started with the phonetic language materials and branched in to all other areas (math, science, culture, art, classified cards, geography, French) as the demand grew. In 2008 we were approached by several schools who had Montessori Toddler programs but didn't have the materials to support them. We worked with the schools to ensure we were following the needs of the Toddlers and within a few months the basic design outline for our Toddler Montessori materials was complete. We now have over 950 Montessori Materials available (including Teacher Training Manuals).
All our Montessori materials have been designed by an AMI Certified Primary Montessori Teacher who was trained by Renilde Montessori (the granddaughter of Maria Montessori). Our designer has over 17 years of experience; in the Primary Montessori classroom, as a Homeschooling parent, a Montessori Consultant, and as Head Administrator of a Montessori school.
It is our goal to provide top quality Montessori materials for Toddlers, Primary (Casa) and lower Elementary children at affordable prices."
I decided to try the Vehicle Match-Up and Memory Game with Ben since he loves vehicles! I started out by printing out the PDF document using hubby's color printer and decided to glue the match-up sheets onto this hard board I have (recycled) and I cut out the matching vehicles images and kept them into this tiny container. Picture below before I started cutting up the printed lesson...
I gave Ben the sports car image for him to find the matching image.
He found it within seconds... picture below of him trying to align the matching images together...
Close up shot of Ben pointing again at the matching images...
You can also view the following video which was recorded the moment we started the Montessori lesson. Noticed he takes a longer time to search and understand my instructions hehehe... but don't you think it's pretty awesome for my 2 year old boy to accomplish this in his first attempt? I'm so awfully proud of him!
You can browse through the many selections of Montessori materials right at the Montessori Print Shop website itself! They have a great selection, great customer support, and affordable prices for their materials as well!
I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with some free Montessori materials (selected by myself) in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.
