Home Education & Montessori

I would love to be able to send Eldest to a Montessori establishment. I looked into a lot before eventually coming to the decision to pull her out of school. I loved the whole philosophy and method using all five senses to enrich the learning process. As it goes, for this kind of education you might have to move and/or get a much better paid job. Both are probably worth doing, however I’m in no position to do it! So we have to make the most of the space we have and what is available to us.We have already been using phonics, we cook together and clean up together after. I have always had an affinity with wooden toys, I just loved them, both girls have always had plenty. Rather than buy a lot of expensive electronic toys we opted for stacking cups and wooden blocks. Already without knowing we were swaying heavily into Montessori education. It made sense for me to do more reading, to see if it really would be suitable for Home Ed. More so would it really fit us?I’m going to make the hazardous jump into yes. Yes it does.

An idea of how low the shelves are

There is a bookshelf off to the left. (Thats an indoor greenhouse on the right)

I decided to stick with a clean white rug with a blue set of lines. The floor is too hard for small bums so rather than hard carpet, I rugged. It works with the corner and seperates that half of the room.

Mojo testing out the Texture bags. Sid testing out the rug.

So that is what it looked like before the items arrived. I haven’t gone crazy buying things, I’ve bought some things that came highly recommended. If you follow me on Pintrest there is links to everything apart from the units and rug.

Tidlo Musical Instrument set by John Crane (review here).

Our version of the ‘Pink Tower’ I opted for a natural one. It’s quite stunning.

Close up of one of the Tower blocks.

Colour boards on the left, Multicultural Music set on the right.

Tangram. This has been a sensation.

After reading all these reviews about the ‘Pink Tower’ being able to self correct children and that they got joy out of completion I recorded Eldests first attempt just in case these happened to be faux.

So that is the start of our journey. I am learning so much about learning that I can’t quite compute it all yet. My children have amazed me already with a few simple items a whole new world appears to be opened up to them.

Our practical skills tend to take place they normally would within the home, cooking and washing in the kitchen, bathing and so on in the bathroom so we will stick to learning those things that way.