Where to buy Montessori Materials Online

Coming from a tiny place in Ontario Canada, I had a bit of a time building my confidence to make more expensive purchases from the US.  Here are some places I have purchased from and had amazing luck and service.

We are fortunate to live in close proximity to a border crossing to have things shipped to a UPS Store that we cross over and pick up our purchases from.
Shipping costs within the US are often discounted or sometimes free.  It's a short trip over for pickup, and can save so much on shipping if this is an option for you. It may also be worth a small road trip for bulk purchases as it saves on shipping and gas!!

Montessori materials are often large and can weigh a fair amount and this can account for higer shipping costs especially into Canada. Shipping within Canada has always been expensive and unfortunately I don not see that changing anytime soon. Hopefully additional carriers will pop up to help make things more affordable.

Alison's Montessori was really reliable and has some great prices. 
IFIT Montessori Equipment is amazing and has incredible customer service - I think they are in BC.  The Montessori Outlet Canada has great prices as well and the products we ordered from them were wonderful. 
 Adena Montessori is often well priced in comparison to others, and they have given me such great service. The products have been wonderful. 
Caliber (if they are still in business) had some great deals, we bought a few puzzle maps on clearance from them that were awesome. 
Grandpa's Montessori was great for some things. 
Affordable Montessori had some great materials and good customer service.
My favorite for all round quality, service and great prices especially reasonable shipping was from
Kid Advance in the US.

Basically (not to sound a bit obsessed but...) I keep a spreadsheet of what I want and need, and a list of my favourite suppliers across the top, list out their prices and go from there. 
Dollar stores are always a favourite as well, all hardware and building supply stores.

There are many things that we have chosen to make ourselves, and you will find our DIY's throughout the blog. We have also created hundreds of print materials that you are welcome to take a look at to see if something works for you. Many materials may just be out of reach due to finances, availability or practicality at home. Thus we have created many substitutes for those who need affordable alternatives and ideas. If you have any questions please feel free to write to us and ask.

Happy shopping!!!

Color Boxes 1 &2 and Color Matching game

These were quite easy to do.  I cut the wood squares out of lattice moulding and sanded the edges really well.  I picked doubles of paint chips from the store, and used wood glue to adhere the chips to the wood.  I put the chips between two pieces of wood and clamped them together to make sure they stuck evenly to the wood.  When they were dry I placed them color side down, and trimmed them with a very sharp exacto knife.

The colour matching game was inspired by one that they sell on most Montessori sites.  I took plywood pieces and cut them to length, and then wood glued paint chip strips (tried to find extra wide ones so that I could cut away any writing) to them.  

I clamped and trimmed these the same way as above.  I next cut large dowels into short lengths, and sanded.  I took the leftover pieces of paint chips and glued them to the tops of the dowels – clamped them between wood and trimmed after dry.  I do really like how this turned out.  The backs are numbered for self-correction.

We had intended to create holes in the cards to seat the dowels, but did not. If I were to make this again I would use wooden disks, and adhere the paint chips to them. 

I did decide to purchase colour box three, and it is so gorgeous!!  Making box 3 would have put me over the edge lol.

These boxes have been so well loved 💕

Montessori DIY Land & Water Forms

This is a project was completely inspired by some amazing DIY's of this material I'd found online! 

The Land & Water Trays are part of the early Montessori Geography work and are a hands on opportunity for your child to experience the look and feel of land and water forms found in nature. 

They were a bit of a process but fun to make!

I bought a set of basic baking trays from the dollar store.  I decided to try and mold the sides in modelling clay and then to pour the molds with a quick set plaster that you can find at Home Depot (it's in what looks like a milk carton).  This worked amazingly well!  When it dried, I simply pulled the clay from the sides, and it left behind clean crisp molds. I left these to completely dry overnight.

I spray primed the entire trays really well.  Then I sprayed them with a water based blue paint. Finally gave them a few coats of a water based sealer to be sure they were water tight. 

 I did buy the wood sandpaper cards, and printed the nomenclature cards.  You can make your own of find many for free online.

These trays are beautiful and fun to use. I am careful in storing these and we take care not to drop them because they are plaster. They have stood up incredibly well! Should we get any chips we just touch up the paint.

  You can also construct our own out of play dough in trays to further for more fun! 

Land & Water Nomenclature Cards can be found for free here & here & here and command/lesson cards here also.  

You can make the sandpaper cards or you can purchase them for $18 here.

Should you want to buy these you can find them reasonably priced here.

If you missed it!

Follow Cherine Making Montessori Ours's board DIY Montessori Materials on Pinterest.

Sharing Sharing Sharing!!

We would LOVE your support...

Please visit and "like" us for updates on our

Facebook Page! We share photos and 

updates of what we are up to here!

We love to hear from you!!

Comment, like and share!!

Visit us on Pinterest as well!!

Don't forget to check out our Montessori 

Printables here!!

Are you subscribed to Making Montessori Ours to get all of our

latest updates by email?

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Make Your Own Montessori Constructive Triangles

The Constructive Triangles are used in early work for a sensorial hands on experience building geometric plane figures. Later the language for the figures is introduced along side further exploration of equivalence and area of plane figures.

This material is expensive, so we opted to try and produce  at home!

The Broad or Brown Stair, Pink Tower & Extension work

Well...I asked my amazing husband to make the Pink Tower & Brown Stair for us.  He did an incredible job!!  I will say that while this was no terribly difficult to make it was very fussy and time consuming - but very rewarding.  We used some new and scrap lumber that required lots of laminating and piecing to get the correct dimensions when cut down.  Tons of sanding and spray painting later and voila!! Now you can also leave these natural if you so desire...many are sold that way as well - I just chose to paint them. To see one in unfinished wood look here .

For a great explanation and lessons for these materials check here and here.

Montessori Research and Development also has an amazing manual for Sensorial extensions.

I printed all of the extensions and made a couple with construction paper Bristol board and my favorite all time thing I found on another super mom's blog...clear contact paper by the roll at Walmart for 10bucks!!!  You can laminate durably - a ton of print work...love it!!

I did purchase the cubes and prisms extensions from Alison's Montessori (great price)- for later use.

The number cards are free here. The extensions pictured here are from Montessori Print Shop here.

Montessori Print Shop has many amazing sonsorial extensions and command/activity cards.

Make Introduction To The Decimal System Cards & Presentation Information

Introduction To The Decimal System cards that we made.  Be bought the Quantity Demonstration Tray  and Decimal System Introduction Tray here - a less expensive version can be bought here. The Montessori Primary Guide has a great explanation and lessons for this work here. I thought it would be easy to make the ply number cards.  Again scrap project plywood and vinyl letters.  We also made a small box from scrap wood to hold them. Here is also a great video of an early presentation of this work.

The quantities can be laid out later on a place value mat you can purchase here or easily make yourself. This work is very important in that is begins their Golden Bead journey, and understanding of physical quantities of the base ten number system (relationship of numbers 1-1000).

DIY Teens & Tens Boards, Montessori Math at Home

We used thin craft plywood from an art supply store.

Getting started…

We decided to home school for various reasons, and a very bad PS experience did not help matters. 

The most important thing to me/us is that we love our children, home school and Montessori.

I want to say off the hop that I am learning as I go – I am not a Montessori expert.  I am continually reading and researching the method.  My children are 2 & 5 so we are finding our way through this together.  I bought a set of the 3-6 manuals/ albums from Montessori Research and Development.  We have made many materials, and also bought a large amount.  I have spent a significant amount of time piecing this puzzle and have had many challenges, rewards and some setbacks trying to incorporate this learning method in our home.  I have poured over the blogs of other Montessori moms out there and am so grateful they have chosen to be so honest, and share their experience knowledge and materials with the world.

I would also love to share some of what we have created here in our home for our children.  The materials we have made are our interpretations of many of the amazing materials we have seen others make.  I am continually inspired by Montessori & home school moms everywhere. 

As I said our setup is not perfect, and I am still trying to find ways of practically housing the materials and creating a “children’s house” within our home.  I have decided though that “it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just has to be”.