I had saved some popsicle sticks Grammy gave us (we often receive left-overs from classroom crafts) and watched all year for the perfectly-sized box to put them in, preferably with ten even compartments. Of course, no such box appeared. I decided to use a plastic container that's been empty for a while, awaiting some contents. I cut dividers from cardboard I'd stashed with our craft supplies. (I'm pretty sure I used some that came wrapped up with Amazon orders.) I started out making the dividers almost two inches deep (to reach the first little notch in the plastic bin), but realized they'd be so tall it would be hard to reach in for the little sticks, so I cut them in half.
I roughly cut the nine dividers, measured my box and marked where I wanted them on a sheet of paper I could slip beneath the box. I then started gluing them in using my most trusty glue (Aleene's Original Tacky Glue).
At first, I put the glue on the cardboard and then slipped it in, but that made a mess, so then I extended the marks on the page and put the glue on the plastic instead, which worked very well. If you want to attempt this yourself, I highly recommend putting the cardboard in a number of times to make sure it's going to fit well. Trimming after glue has been smeared is not so much fun.
As you can see, the spindle box isn't perfect, but I think it'll work for us. If you have talent with a sewing machine, I'd recommend trying this design, which I think is wonderful. I also found another blogger who used a tray she bought on sale. I thought a box would store more easily and we didn't have balsa lying around from other projects, but her spindle box is definitely more beautiful than mine.
If you don't have a book like mine (Teaching Montessori in the Home: Pre-School Years), you can search online for ways to use a spindle box like this one. I'll try to blog next year about how we used it ourselves.
