Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Setting up Montessori at Home

Our family has been incredibly blessed to be able to move to a bigger home a couple of weeks ago. After living in an 800 sq ft apartment for a year, it seems like a castle! 

We have been utilizing Montessori as our system of school at home since last January. I thought I would share a couple of rooms in our house that are primarily for the kids. We have this great space in the basement that we turned into the school room:



All of our materials have a spot on the shelf somewhere and additional materials are in the closet. The rest of our regular toys are in a "toy library."  If they want a new toy they just trade their old one out for something in the closet.  So far, the kids haven't seemed to want to trade much. Bear seems content with his Legos and Indie with her books. 



The small tables, chairs, and baskets are from Ikea. The wire rack is a large one from Target that I split into two. I know that the metal is a bit cold but the colors in the room are warm and the carpet helps out. I tried not to buy too many new things. The rack used to be in our kitchen and is getting re-purposed downstairs. 

One of my favorite rooms in our house is Indie's bedroom. The chair and rug are Ikea. The table is a shoe shelf from target. The crib is an antique doll crib I updated with some new fabrics. The photos were done by Sarah Nicole Photography.  We worked fairly hard to keep everything as childproof as possible so the space is her own. 



We switched her from a crib to a floor bed, adding some extra carpeting to soften up the hardwood. She really loves it. I've been so surprised! 


For her room, we are also adding a shorter rack so she can hang her clothes up in the closet along with a mirror by her bed. 

Barrett's room hasn't been done up too much. The best part of his room is the hammock.  We switched him over to help him sleep a little better.  He seems to love it and spends hours in his room playing and building.  After months of not sleeping well, this is so great! My husband attached the two posts directly to the walls. The room is fairly narrow for it's size so it worked out really well! You could do the same thing with a corner if your room was more square. 



Enjoy!


Check out some other great ideas:
Living Montessori Now Montessori Monday

3 comments:

  1. Great job of creating a Montessori-friendly home! I love that you told where you found everything. Thanks for linking to Montessori Monday! I featured your post at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page and pinned it to my Montessori-Friendly Home Pinterest Board at http://pinterest.com/debchitwood/montessori-friendly-home/

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  2. I love the bedroom setups! We are still getting Vicki Jo's Montessori-inspired bedroom in order, and this gives great ideas. Unfortunately, our nearest Ikea is in Atlanta, and the shipping makes it a not-so-cheap choice!

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  3. We really only used Ikea for a couple of things! I've seen kid sized chairs at Target and some other bigger stores. We have also considered simply chopping off the legs of older tables to make them kid friendly. Good luck hunting and making it your own!

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