Preparing the Montessori Environment At Home

What do you do with an unused bonus room?  Create a Montessori classroom, of course!

Now that it is summer, we are embarking on our new homeschooling adventure.  All of my teaching supplies and materials need a home.  In the world of Montessori, preparing the environment is serious business.  The Montessori classroom is carefully designed for the children who will be learning there.  Several very basic principles come to mind.  The furnishings and any decorations are on the sight lines of the children, and furnishings and materials are scaled down to a child's size when possible.  The materials themselves are grouped by practical life, sensorial, math, language arts, culture and history, science, music, art, and peace.  Children move about the classroom as they choose, working at a table or on the floor with a work mat.

Building a Montessori environment in a home poses a few challenges.  Rooms in a house are usually not empty.  Unless one has planned from the beginning to make one a classroom, there is stuff to purge, or move to other locations.

Bonus was a playroom...

Music and media...

Library and "Man Room" of sorts.

So, I developed a plan of action!

Step 1:  Move or Purge stuff.

Step 2: Plan what areas of your room (or house) are suitable for what activities.

Step 3: Figure out what furnishings you already own that you can use.  Low shelving is key.

Step 4: Look around on the internet for montessori classrooms; research and plan some more.

Step 5: Try out some furnishings to see what it looks like; determine what other things must be found or bought; get down on your knees and look around - what will the space look like to your children?

Step 6: Success!??

I actually haven't gotten to step 6 as of yet.  Above you can see Little Dude helping me clean while I am setting up some low shelving.  At first, I wanted the kids to stay away while I created their space, but having them work next to me proved to be better as I could already see what was working about the space and what was not.

I am very excited about how things are coming along.  It will not be my "perfect" Montessori classroom, but I remind myself that my home (much to my disappointment) was not actually designed with the Montessori method in mind.

I think I found shelves that will work for the Metal Insets!

Pumpkin's writing desk was found at a thrift store.

Our patio is already our gardening area...

And it's shaded and concrete - summer art projects!

 I have a long way to go before our classroom spaces will feel "done."  As I finish spaces I will post again to show the progress!