Introduction
With a few little plywood boards from the hardware store and my jigsaw I have made a few 'Montessori friendly' puzzle which are rarely found in shops. Fruits and vegetables as realisticly as possible looking and their intersections to explore - Stars in different sizes to experience dimensions - a colourful rainbow with different sized squares. You will find an overview on the different puzzles, categorised into difficulty levels here in this article: Alles über Puzzle.
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Things needed
- Plywood
- Food coloring and liquid watercolors or colored ink
- sandpaper
- Homemade beeswax polish oder babysafe varnish
- Coping saw and small drill
- Hot glue gun
- 2 bigger and 2 smaller wooden beads
- Brush, small bowl and paper towel
Steps
Sketch the fruits onto the board, using a drill make little wholes to thread the blade through.
Carefully cut out and sand well. Test the puzzle parts if they are easy to insert and take out, if not sand again.
Using a hot glue gun glue down the woodboard with the negative forms - press down.
Paint the fruits and their insides with indian ink. Seal with beeswax polish. Glue the pearls with a glue gun onto the pieces.
The beeswax polish gives the wood a finish that feels great to touch but is only saliva proof for some seconds. In case your child still likes to explore things with her/his mouth, I would recommend saliva proof non-toxic varnish.
The Vegetablepuzzle
4 kinds of vegetables: tomatoe, carrot, onion and pea pod. The work steps are basically the same as in the fruit puzzle.
Seriation "Stars"
4 stars exactly the same gradually getting smaller in size. The work steps are basically the same as in the fruit puzzle above.
Any form can be used for this, apples, circles, muffins - it is only important that the forms are exactly the same.
Rainbow
8 squares, decreasing in size, in the colours of the rainbow. The works steps are essentially the same as in the fruit puzzle above.
Compared to the star puzzle this puzzle's the properties are not isolated. These pieces change in size and colour - which makes this a more 'advanced puzzle'.
No time to make your own?
There a no exact readymade alternatives - here are some similar ones:
