Montessori methods with elem. age kids, anyone?

Question:
. After lurking for a short while, I have decided to find out if anyone is using Montessori methods for elementary age children. I'm home-schooling my soon-to-be-8-year-old (he is absolutely not 7 anymore :) ), and I ran across some information on her methods but would like more.

Although I use some "packaged" curricula (A Beka for language arts and Miqon math),

I also loosely integrate other lesson plans I've found (Five in a Row, XXX Through Children's Literature (fill in XXX with Math, Science, Music, Art, and others), Core Knowledge, etc--BTW, if anyone would like info on these, I would be happy to provide it-I think they're wonderful),

and we use manipulatives whenever possible (since we make many of them, this is a never-ending process).

It was on a manipulative-seeking mission that I ran across Montessori information, and I thought it was great! However, finding reasonably priced Montessori materials has proven impossible so far, and much of the lesson information I've found is for younger children. The best resource so far has been a book by Elizabeth Hainstock, but it covers only language arts & math. I read a breif description of her Great Lessons and Key Lessons in a book (I believe it was by Paul Polk Lillard) that I'm especially interested in and would like to incorporate, but I just don't have the background to wing it.

If anyone can assist me in my quest for info, I would greatly appreciate it. Any recommendations for manipulative learning or lessons/books/methods that have a heavy emphasis in culture/history would also be great.

Answer:
-Take a look at Oak Meadow school. They have a site on the net, but I'm not sure what the address is. Also take a look at Math-u-See. Oak Meadow is a Montesori based home school cirriculum and Math -U-See is a heavily manipulative based math program. If your boy likes the hands on stuff, this might be right for him, It seems to work for my son.

-Here are a number of bookmarks:

General Montessori Pages: http://home.earthlink.net/~buhlman/general.pages.html Main Montessori Resources: http://home.earthlink.net/~buhlman/main.resources.html Montessori Resources on the Internet: http://www.xe.net/isnet/tms/othrmont.htm NAMTA (N. American Montessori Teachers Assn): http://cybergate.net/~mashani/namta.html Swiss Homeschoolers using Montessori: http://home.earthlink.net/~buhlman/montessori-homeschool.html The Common Vision Resources for Maria Montessori: http://www.halcyon.com/comvis/resource_montessori.html The Montessori Web Index: http://sunrise.byu.edu/~browna/montessori/montessori.html Montessori for Moms (A complete Montessori HS curriculum online, including instructions for making manipulatives): http://www.primenet.com/~gojess/mfm/mfmhome.htm

I have been using a more eclectic method with my 5-year-old, after (obviously) extensively researching the Montessori option. One of the obstacles for me has been our living situation - we live in a very rural setting, in a one-room house, which makes it difficult to "prepare the environment" satisfactorily for a true Montessori experience. Also I think my natural tendency is to be more eclectic than that, making it difficult for me to stick to any "one way". At any rate, I do notice a very obvious change in my daughter when we do succeed in using Montessori methods. For example, she loves washing her table! And I think that the sandpaper letters (handmade - warning: these take a lot longer than you might think!) helped her with early letter recognition, especially with the lower-case letters. So we incorporate a LOT of Montessori principals in our education so far.