Our New Montessori Map Puzzles

Ooh, I've wanted these for so long!

Of course, I'd never say, nor would I believe, that the purchase of certain materials is required for a successful homeschool. If you've got a house full of the usual house stuff, a roving eye for adventure, a swift internet connection, and a library card, I'd say, and I'd believe, that you're all set to homeschool younger kids.

However, there IS a bunch of other stuff that I want...

And that's how, after combining my CAGW salary with a better-than-usual month (and therefore a lot of hard work) in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, I used up the majority of my crafts/homeschool budget on this gorgeous set:

This is a full set of geography map puzzles! For now, it is the favorite toy of both kids.

The set includes North America, Africa--

--Asia, the United States--

--South America, the world--

--Australia, and Europe:

The puzzles are huge, although the practice of putting the peg at the capital makes some of the pieces surprisingly fragile (I, myself, broke the Alaska piece due to the fact that the peg marking the capital is only millimeters narrower than that narrow leg of Alaska), and some of the pieces are small enough that our foster kittens were constantly in danger of swallowing one.

Syd, especially, really enjoys puzzles, and since I'm getting the idea that she may be a more physical, tactile learner than her sister, I'm happy to add these to our geography studies, combined with pin maps, map labelling, cultural studies, geography-relevant history, and, in the future, hopefully lots and lots of map copywork.

And yes, in case you're wondering, I DID have to move around nearly every stick of furniture in my house to find a place for these maps. Currently, they live on top of the overhead projector cart that we bought to sit in the living room and hold the overhead projector and our reference books. I moved the overhead projector to the basement, to a large wall shelf that I converted to a homeschool supplies shelf. The giant surplus bins that were sitting on that shelf are now piled on the floor next to the shelf, and lord knows where they'll end up, or what will be displaced when they do find a home. I'm already looking forward to this year's summer garage sale!

The Homeschool Shelves

One of the best things about switching the kids' bedroom with our study/studio is the mindful reorganization that has taken place. Fabric is neatly folded and visible, reference books are accessible, the paint is all together in one place, what was once lost is now found, etc.

In our NEW study, I've been paying special attention to how we store and display our homeschool supplies. I try to follow the kids' interests from week to week, which means that most of our homeschool work is done in unit studies, which means that the more I can keep like-minded materials together, the better.

The big and unwieldy stuff sits on the floor, so here we've got the conventional globe and the chalkboard globe, a model rocket kit, a crate containing all the base ten blocks (nine thousand cubes, nine hundred flats, and loads of ten bars and unit blocks) and the Cuisenaire rods, and the state quarter map.

Above that is the math shelf--math games and boxed activities, a Playskool abacus and a traditional Chinese abacus, playing cards and dice, a binder for worksheets and flash cards (I'm a big proponent of math fact memorization), lots of workbooks (I'm also a big proponent of math drills), and math manipulatives, such as pattern blocks, tangrams, mosaic tiles, and a geoboard. To the right side of each shelf I've glued little magnets to hold the various accessories of homeschool work--scissors, bar magnets, drawing compasses, staplers, etc.

Moving to the left and up a level:

That lower shelf is science stuff--magnets, board games, the plaster of Paris volcano, science activity books, the microscope and its accessories, and a chemistry set. Above the science shelf is the art shelf--specialty markers and crayons, extras of the crayon, marker, and colored pencil sets that we use regularly, the stapler and extra glue, books for cutting up, extra lined paper and dry erase boards, pipe cleaners, the UV-reactive beads, and the acrylic-dyed school glue.

To the right, on the same level:

The lower shelf on the left has biology stuff, with the plaster of Paris skeleton mold, the human x-rays, a couple of anatomy books, and several biology and medicine DVDs. Then we've got some environmental science stuff, with sun-reactive paper, a kite, and wind energy stuff. In the front is ferrofluid and iron filings for more magnet play, then biology encyclopedias and children's magazines, and then books on all branches of the sciences.

The top shelf is still art, with a glass bowl of acorns on the far left, then Waldorf window star paper, professional-grade art supplies, and modeling beeswax in the front. To the right is language arts, with workbooks and mad libs, sticker letters and sight word flash cards, and Scrabble and Boggle on the far right.

Higher on the shelves is the stuff that requires my prep work, or the stuff that the kids don't usually choose without my encouragement:

The lower shelf there is history on the right, with Magic Tree House books (the kids have these memorized, and regularly re-read library copies, so I usually only bring our own copies down when we're studying something relevant), all the Story of the World activity books and other children's history books, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. presidents flash cards, and the ink that we use with our quill pens.

To the left on the lower shelf is geography--a map quilt project of the big kid's, some atlases, a blank U.S. map paper pad, and a sailor's valentine kit from Florida. Above that is the art materials that require either adult prep or adult supervision--powdered tempera, professional-grade artist's acrylic paints, watercolor paints, things like gesso and sealant, and beads.

The top shelf is stuff that we're not ready for yet--higher-level workbooks, and cut-and-assemble paper model kits. There's also a bag containing a ridiculous number of little paper bags, good for goodness knows what.

Here's what the shelves, or most of them, at least, look like in panoramic, including one show-off and a colored dinosaur picture:

And when the kids aren't simply digging around in the dirt or playing with toy ponies all day, that's some of what we have to do!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!