How to Prepare Montessori Sensorial Extensions with Spielgaben

If you’re a Montessori homeschooler, you want to make the best use of your beautiful Montessori materials. If you own Spielgaben as well, you’ll be able to easily prepare some lovely Montessori sensorial extensions that give your preschooler extra learning opportunities.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Spielgaben. All opinions are honest and my own. This post also contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).

In case you’re not familiar with Spielgaben toys, they are exceptionally high-quality educational toys designed for ages 3-12. You can see from the photo that the cabinet is very high quality and fits in well in a room with traditional Montessori materials. I love the new, easily removable drawers in version 4. The yarn balls from the 1st Spielgaben set can be used with babies and toddlers, too.

The Spielgaben complete set comes with over 700 pages of full-color printed learning materials. These printed materials help you as a parent or teacher easily use Spielgaben toys educationally with your child and/or students.

Spielgaben Materials Used in This Post

For these activities, I used materials from most of the Spielgaben sets. Note: The yarn balls are fine for babies and toddlers. The other sets should only be used with ages 3 and older unless your toddler no longer mouths objects or you are constantly supervising your toddler during an activity using the materials.

Building a Cube (Pink Tower Extension)

I LOVE the Montessori pink tower. It’s very cool that you can use 8 of the natural cubes from Spielgaben to create a cube the size of the one of the pink tower cubes. For most preschoolers, you could add 8 Spielgaben cubes to a basket with the pink tower cube. (I used a Montessori Services basket.)

For an advanced preschooler, you could ask him or her to find the number of cubes that would be needed to build a cube the size of the pink tower cube.

For the layout, I used a Montessori Services work rug.

Red Rod Length Matching (Red Rods Extension)

I also love the beauty and feel of the Montessori red rods. It’s fun that you can put out the Spielgaben sticks to find one that matches in length to the shortest red rod. I used the classic wooden sticks from Spielgaben set 8. You can buy them as an add-on if you have the latest version of Spielgaben materials.

For an advanced preschooler, you might want to ask him or her to find the matching length of stick without taking the red rod to compare.

Geometric Solids Matching (Geometric Solids Extension)

This activity uses Alison’s Montessori natural geometric solids along with the Spielgaben sphere, cube, and cylinder. It would work well with the blue Montessori geometric solids, too. It’s amazing how well-matched in quality the Spielgaben materials are to the Montessori materials.

Color Scavenger Hunt (Color Tablets Extension)

I used a  Multicraft tray and Montessori Services basket to prepare a tray for a color scavenger hunt. I don’t think homeschoolers need to buy Montessori color tablets. I printed out and laminated the Montessori Print Shop free color tablet printable.

You could add color tablets in one color to the tray or in all the colors of the Spielgaben materials for your child to choose. Your child could then take the tray to the Spielgaben cabinet to find a variety of Spielgaben materials in the color of the chosen color tablet.

Your child could make a design with the materials or lay them out in any pattern.

Constructive Triangles Extension Activities

For homeschool, you can either buy Montessori constructive triangles or make your own fairly easily. This extension tray using Spielgaben wooden parquetry tablets and a free printable was part of my initial Spielgaben review post.

This tray created using Spielgaben wooden parquetry tablets and a free printable was part of my Montessori-inspired geometry activities post.

This is so cool … I love being able to extend the beauty and learning opportunities of Montessori sensorial materials!

Note: Here’s the link to my favorite laminator … inexpensive and great for almost any activity that needs to be laminated!

UPDATE: