Montessori at home: Principles for the journey
The beauty of Montessori at home is that your home is not supposed to mirror the classroom environment. In fact, quite the opposite. The Montessori classroom environment is designed to provide children with practical application of daily life skills they use in the real world—in your home. While the Montessori at home journey is filled with inspiration from beautifully curated shelves, wooden toys and child focused furniture solutions, the fact is that you likely already have a lot of what you need to get started.
It’s not just about the shelf or the functional kitchen—it is about foundational principles that guide us as we support the development of the WHOLE child. Considering the Montessori philosophy in the process means to consider the importance of cultivating a child’s autonomy and our role in respecting their process as they develop it.
Here are the Montessori inspired principles that guide our own Montessori journey at home. I could truly write about each of these for days, but now we have this platform which will help me expand on each of them as we all go through this journey together. If you have additional questions about any of these, send them my way or leave a comment below so we can explore these topics further!
Involving the child in daily Practical Life
Practical life activities are the ordinary steps we take in our day to care for ourselves and our environment. Prepping our meals, getting dressed, cleaning up spills, watering the plants—the list is endless. When adapted to the child’s developmental stage, they offer an opportunity for practicing autonomy, concentration, executive functioning development, refining motor skills, learning through a sequence of steps, and experiencing pride in mastery along the way. With gentle and respectful guidance, practical life can provide children with an avenue to contribute to their home environment in a way that will help strengthen their sense of belonging and responsibility for their environment, and the foundation for developing skills they will use throughout their lifetime.
The added bonus is that practical life offers opportunities for the entire family to connect while completing many of the tasks that need to happen during the day, and that most times children are eager to join if invited. Whether it is giving your child the opportunity to choose their own clothes and put them on, encourage them to wash their own fruit, handing them a cloth to help clean up a spill, or engaging them in larger tasks like laundry or gardening—your home environment is the most valuable material you already have.
Simplified work and play spaces that promote concentration and creativity
In a Montessori school environment, the child has a few work options to pick from, all clearly displayed but contained within their own space (usually a tray) at the child’s reach, and suited to the child’s developmental stage, interests, or the season. With a more minimal approach to the work materials available, the child is able to more efficiently explore their environment, focus on their choice for longer and more creatively.
These benefits are not only evident within the classroom environment—they are supported by science. A recent study evaluating the play of children offered an environment with different number of toys found that children in an environment with less work options (four toys) were able to concentrate twice as long and more creatively than those with more options (sixteen toys). It may seem as though providing more options to play would lead to children engaging in play for longer, but researchers suggest that the overabundance of materials available to a child creates a type of distraction similar to that of having the TV on in the background.
At home, this principle can translate to having a shelf in an area they child can freely work in with about 8 options at any given time, rotating materials every week or so based on observation and following of the child’s interests and skills. In our home, we apply this same formula to the art area and bookshelf, with minimal rotated options to extend and enrich other ongoing activities at home or interests at the time.
A prepared environment that promotes autonomy and joy in learning
A “prepared environment” is any space, whether it is for play, eating, food prep, sleeping or reading where the child will interact with their world (even spaces outside!). The prepared aspect involves cultivating spaces that invite the child to participate and explore independently in order to facilitate learning without the adult’s unnecessary interference in the process. The most popular example of this in Montessori homes may be a low shelf for toys, a weaning table or a functional kitchen space for the child to have food prep materials at reach. The common thread amongst all of these examples is not just the beautiful child-size alternatives, but the way in which they facilitate the child’s autonomy in choice and exploration.
If you think about it that way, you can apply this principle beyond the playroom with items you may already have. For things you do together during the day ask yourself: “how can I ‘help them do it themselves’?” Maybe a stool that helps them reach the sink and an easy-to-use soap alternative so they can learn and practice how to wash hands on their own. A low drawer or cabinet in your kitchen with plates and silverware at their reach so they can help set their place on the table. A low chair or stool at the entry way next to their shoes so they can participate in getting ready to go when its time. A low table or cart to place their dirty dishes on after a meal. It’s about providing solutions that allow them to be active participants in their own self-care and the care of their environment independently and with the possibility for success.
Cultivation of the Prepared Adult
The thing is, none of the above are possible unless the adult—the most important material—is also prepared, just like the environment. Dr. Montessori spoke of the adult as inspiration for how a child directs their movement. Children absorb not only how we interact with our environment and how we manage our own emotions, but also how we respect and trust in their ability to carry out their own role in the home environment.
For the above principles to work at home, we have to let them work. Simone Davies writes about the Prepared Adult so beautifully in The Montessori Toddler. It is our presence, our observations, and our own slowing down that will cultivate an environment where the child feels trusted to explore, to carry glass and ceramic across the room, to pour their own water and is guided with tools for the next step when something spills. That is the respect that we need to provide as adults in the environment, a role that does not correct and is not permissive, but that provides space and guidance for finding solutions and alternatives in respectful collaboration with that younger human.
Quite frankly, the “prepared” version of myself is a constant work in progress, and most definitely the “pandemic-mode” version of myself is not what I would consider ideal. However, these past months have become a reminder that the core of the work is to have kind, realistic and flexible expectations about ourselves and the process. And that once we are able to get to a place of real and flexible expectations, we can focus on the importance of observing, respecting and following our child for who they really are. The word “cultivation” is there for a reason: preparing ourselves for supporting our child is a never-ending process. No matter where you are in your parenthood journey (or your pandemic mode), remember that the goal is not perfection and that you are exactly what your child needs.
As the title notes, Montessori at home is a journey—we follow, we learn and adjust along the way.
So glad to have you here, joining as we learn and work together to support child development at home.
