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Our Montessori at Home Environment

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Montessori permeates our home in many ways. One way, though, is a Montessori designated room. Our dedicated Montessori at Home environment is not a large space. The room is a {small} classroom where we keep all our Montessori materials. T

he boys know this room is sacred {ah-hem – too strong?) in that their trains and other misc wonderful toys stay in their play spaces. We integrate Montessori throughout our home with several reading nooks, low coat racks, stools to give our boys access to sinks, toilets, snacks, etc and their own cabinet for dishes and glasses for them to access when they need to help themselves. All of these spaces are a work in progress.

I thought I’d give you a peak at the progress of our Montessori at Home environment for preschoolers and toddlers.

montessori_at_home_space

Montessori at Home Environment

The flow of the room is my focus at the moment. Currently, the shelves move from Practical Life to Sensorial to Language to Math to Life Sciences to Geography/Culture. Of course, language is found throughout the other areas of the room.

I rotate materials every few weeks. I will also mention that I am fortunate to be able to really focus on the 3-4 year old range. I stay home with our 3 year old, while my older son attends Montessori. So, this fact helps avoid overloading the shelves in such a small space.

Montessori at Home Practical Life

practical_life_shelves

In the top left, there is a hand transfer or pouring of beads work. Next to it is a tonging work with clear gems and a small bath mat I found at Target. Then we have a four part sorting work with small wooden beautifully colored small round beads from Spielgaben.

On the bottom shelf is a Hex board from Montessori Services, then an open and close basket and another gem from Spielgaben, their beading work. {I was given these materials from Spielgaben for review in a later post.)

beading_work

Montessori at Home Sensorial

sensorial_shelves

We have pre-sensorial and sensorial on these shelves. You can see the Pink Tower (the Brown Stair was on top of the Practical Life shelves) to the left. On top of the shelves is our Geometry Cabinet.

Not shown in this image are our Knobless Cylinders, which sit to the right of the Geometry Cabinet. On the first shelf, we have a basket of WEDGiTS (I always have some sort of building or pattern block on the shelf), then the Triangle Box and a small version of the Knobbed Cylinders. O

n the bottom shelf we have Plan Toy’s Geometric Sorting Board, the Rectangle Box and the Binomial Cube.

Montessori at Home Language

language_shelves

Our language shelves are filled mostly with Pink Level works for my 3 year old. This shelf is a new one. Montessori shelving is pricey so I am always looking for alternatives. ClosetMaid’s Closet Organizer is a great (and inexpensive) one.

I am so please with this shelf, I have ordered another one for Blue Level work. On the top we have pre-reading work: a mammal and plant card sort and small to large image match.

Then our Sound of the Week basket, then our Sound Group basket, then (a-e-i-o-u) short vowel word images and their corresponding labels next to them.

On the second shelf, I prepared Melissa & Doug’s See & Spell with only short vowel words and in the basket are the exact letters to match the words as the control of error. I found these great pink pencil containers at Goodwill for $1 each that are perfect for short vowel objects and their labels.

Next to that work is a box with short vowel words and the exact letters from the moveable alphabet for the child to spell. Behind that work is a mixed object basket so my older son can use the moveable alphabet to spell short vowel words.

On the bottom, I have the only Blue Level work with is a Digraph “Bingo” Chart sitting on top of the Moveable Alphabet box. Then we have writing boards, slips of paper and pencils, a word builder tool and then a basket of word families. I also have Sound Necklaces hanging up for the boys to hunt down objects in our home that begin with various sounds. Kids love to play fetch!

Montessori at Home Math

math_shelves

Tucked away in the corner are the Math shelves. Red Rods on top, then a pre-math Lego work with Duplos and the Spindle Boxes. On the next shelf, Fraction Skittles, Counters and Teen Hanging Board. On the bottom shelf we have the Power of Three cube and Geometric Solids (a sensorial material). Then you can see a work desk which breaks math and life sciences.

I am going to stop here for now. I will post Life Science, History and Geography/Culture in my next post. I hope this information was enough for you at this point! Please make a comment with any questions. I love hearing from you!

Marnie

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