Skip to content
Homeschool Montessori

Every Montessori lesson, explained for homeschool parents

Start with the first lesson · Hand Washing, 15 months to 3.5 years

Look up a lesson by area or age and get the aim, the materials, the presentation step by step, how the child sees their own mistake, what comes next, and whether to make the material or buy it.

60 lessons and 58 materials so far, across all five areas.

Illustration: a low Montessori shelf of pale wood in a quiet room, with six practical life and sensorial works each set out on its own tray.
IllustrationA low shelf set for the morning, one work to a tray.

The sequence, area by area

All lessons
Illustration: a Montessori dry pouring tray on a low shelf, with small pouring vessels and a bowl of dried beans.
IllustrationDry pouring

Practical Life

Everyday care of self and environment: pouring, spooning, washing, dressing.

  1. 1Hand Washing15 months to 3.5 years
  2. 2Dry Pouring Between Two Pitchers18 months to 3.5 years
  3. 3Spooning: Transferring with a Spoon18 months to 3.5 years
  4. 4Wet Pouring Between Two Pitchers2 to 4 years
  5. 5Grace and Courtesy Lessons2 to 6 years
  6. 6Button Dressing Frame2.5 to 4.5 years
  7. 7Sweeping with a Brush and Dustpan2.5 to 5 years
  8. 8Folding Cloths2.5 to 5 years
  9. 9Banana Slicing (First Food Preparation)2.5 to 5 years
  10. 10Table Scrubbing3 to 5.5 years
  11. 11Flower Arranging3 to 5.5 years
  12. 12Metal Polishing3.5 to 6 years
Illustration: the Montessori brown stair, ten brown wooden prisms laid side by side from thickest to thinnest on a linen mat.
IllustrationBrown stair

Sensorial

Materials that isolate one quality (size, length, color, sound) so the child can compare and order it.

  1. 1Knobbed Cylinders2 to 4 years
  2. 2Pink Tower2.5 to 4 years
  3. 3Brown Stair (Broad Stair)2.5 to 4.5 years
  4. 4Touch Boards (Rough and Smooth Boards)2.5 to 4.5 years
  5. 5Red Rods (Long Rods)3 to 5 years
  6. 6Color Tablets: Boxes 1, 2 and 33 to 5 years
  7. 7Sound Cylinders (Sound Boxes)3 to 5 years
  8. 8Geometric Cabinet (Plane Geometric Insets)3 to 5 years
  9. 9Mystery Bag (Stereognostic Bag)3 to 5.5 years
  10. 10Binomial Cube3.5 to 6 years
  11. 11Geometric Solids3.5 to 6 years
  12. 12Trinomial Cube4 to 6 years
Illustration: the Montessori golden beads (golden bead material) on a wooden tray: loose unit beads, ten bars, hundred squares and thousand cubes.
IllustrationGolden beads

Math

Concrete quantity first, then symbols: number rods, golden beads, stamp game.

  1. 1Number Rods3.5 to 5 years
  2. 2Sandpaper Numerals3.5 to 5 years
  3. 3Golden Beads: Introduction to the Decimal System4 to 5.5 years
  4. 4Spindle Boxes: Counting 0 to 94 to 5.5 years
  5. 5Teen Boards (Seguin Board A)4 to 6 years
  6. 6Cards and Counters: Odd and Even4 to 5.5 years
  7. 7Stamp Game: Static Addition4.5 to 7.5 years
  8. 8Short Bead Chains (Squaring Chains)4.5 to 6.5 years
  9. 9Tens Boards (Seguin Board B)4.5 to 6.5 years
  10. 10Fraction Insets (Fraction Circles)4.5 to 7 years
  11. 11Hundred Board5 to 7 years
  12. 12Addition Strip Board5 to 7.5 years
Illustration: the Montessori sandpaper letters, rough letters on wooden boards standing in a box, consonants on pink boards and vowels on blue boards.
IllustrationSandpaper letters

Language

Sounds before letter names, writing before reading: sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet, pink series.

  1. 1Sandpaper Letters2.5 to 5 years
  2. 2Sound Games (I Spy)2.5 to 4.5 years
  3. 3Moveable Alphabet: Building First Words3.5 to 6 years
  4. 4Metal Insets3.5 to 6 years
  5. 5Pink Series: Object Box Reading4 to 6 years
  6. 6Three-Part Cards: Land and Water Forms4 to 6.5 years
  7. 7Blue Series: Words with Consonant Blends4.5 to 7 years
  8. 8Grammar Symbols: The Noun and the Verb4.5 to 7 years
  9. 9Puzzle Words (Sight Words)4.5 to 7 years
  10. 10Green Series: Phonograms5 to 7.5 years
  11. 11Command Cards (Reading of Commands)5 to 7.5 years
  12. 12Grammar Boxes and Grammar Box Cards5.5 to 9 years
Illustration: Montessori three-part cards for a leaf on a wooden tray: a picture card, a label card and a control card.
IllustrationThree-part cards

Cultural

Geography, science and the wider world: globes, puzzle maps, land and water forms.

  1. 1Sandpaper Globe: Land and Water2.5 to 4.5 years
  2. 2Caring for Plants2.5 to 5.5 years
  3. 3World Puzzle Map: Continents3 to 5.5 years
  4. 4Land and Water Forms3 to 5.5 years
  5. 5Continent Globe (Painted Globe)3 to 5 years
  6. 6Sink and Float3 to 5.5 years
  7. 7Living and Nonliving: A First Sort3.5 to 6 years
  8. 8Botany Cabinet: Leaf Shapes3.5 to 6 years
  9. 9Flags of the World3.5 to 6 years
  10. 10Parts of a Plant (Botany Puzzles)3.5 to 6 years
  11. 11Zoology Puzzles (Parts of an Animal)3.5 to 6 years
  12. 12The Sun and the Planets (Solar System)4 to 6 years

Lessons are listed from the youngest typical starting age.

What to offer at each age

All ages

How this reference is made

Every lesson cites its sources, starting with Montessori's own books. Nothing is behind a login or an email form.

No lesson here has been presented at home yet, and each page says so in plain words. No credentialed guide has reviewed these pages yet either, so the “Reviewed by” line on every lesson stays empty until one does.

How pages are written explains the sources and the illustrations.

The quickest way to judge it is to read the sequence itself: all 60 lessons, area by area.