Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources How-to Stations? Montessori source book?

So work-jobs is exactly right and learning centers are not.

All the learning center and other activities stuff I checked out require constant teacher attention... they're not things that can be kept on the shelf to encourage use of free "station" time and differentiated activities.

Problem: Is there anything published after say, 1990, that doesn't have scary dangerous things like sharp nails and creepy blindfolds (eg decorated bags over the child's head)?

There's a ton of wonderful stuff in this book from the 1970s but I worry that it will be off-putting.

Side question: Is it that the educational establishment hasn't encouraged kids to work on their own for 30-odd years, or is there a new vocabulary word I'm missing that isn't learning centers that covers this idea? Amazon doesn't seem to think so...

Check out the book Mommy Teach Me by Barbara Curtis. While the book is aimed at homeschooling parents, it has tons of ideas for simple Montessori materials you (or teacher) can make.

Also check this out:
http://www.facebook.com/LivingMontessoriNow

Tons of ideas and links that a teacher could easily use.

My mom used to use some source books in her classroom and she gave us a few when we were homeschooling.

One of them was "shoebox centers for math" or some such thing. It had a lot of pretty entertaining-- and reasonably independent-- activities in it and we definitely used a few of those ideas.

Another was "File Folder games for..." math? Reading?

Both are pretty mainstream pedagogically, so not really Montessori-like in that respect.