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!

My husband made boxes for sets 3 - Triangular Box, 4 - Large Hexagonal Box, 5 - Small Hexagonal Box. 

The two are rectangular boxes were found at the dollar store. 

They are at this point taped till the wood glue dries, and then the rest of the pieces will be transferred from the other boxes shown here.
The boxes are lovely to have but finicky to make. He left about 1cm clearance around the triangle and hexagons, and cut out the bottoms to start. For the hexagon he placed one side on and marked the angle for cutting, and the rest to follow were the same. He did the same for the triangle box.

 Small Hexagonal Box #5

 Large Hexagonal Box #4

Triangular Box # 3

This was not terribly hard, but tons of work.  I printed the triangles from a free site, and cut them  out to trace them onto the board.  
I keep anything that I think could possibly be reused, and we happened to have some Masonite from a dresser backing kicking around.  It was smooth on both sides which was ideal for the pieces to be slid around on the rug or table.

My husband cut while I traced the shapes onto the board. We worked on one box at a time, not to confuse things.  
I spayed them all in the correct (or as close to) colours.  I did not prime ours but if I were to do this again I would definitely prime to seal the board, as it absorbed the paint quickly and required several coats.

Then there was the business of getting the black lines on.  I found 1/4" black automotive pin striping from Canadian Tire (extremely durable, approx 6 or $7), and cut it to fit.  I love how these turned out, but you could always use a black sharpie.

A few links to check out for information regarding the boxes, here and here and here. 

 The printouts are from free from Livable Learning.

I would recommend that you mark your pieces from each box to help your child determine quickly which box they belong to should they combine the boxes.

We absolutely love the way this material turned out. However if I did not have the materials on hand or could fairly easily do this, I would most definitely not hesitate to print and laminate card stock to create it. 

Have you made these? If so we'd love to see them!