If you have a toddler at home and you decided to bring Montessori into your daily life, chances are that you are already overwhelmed with tons of Montessori information and resources online. I get you, I was there too. Sometimes I am still there. But if there is one resource that kept my sanity and helped me not to give up when I was an overwhelmed beginner, it is this book – “The Montessori Toddler” by Simone Davies.
It is written in a simple way so every parent can understand it, and yet it is so comprehensive that it really covered every question I had since I started to bring Montessori into our home. What I love the most about this book is its practicality. It gives clear advice on how to best help your child to learn. It also gives beautiful photos that help you understand how you can implement activity by yourself.
In a Montessori approach, we see the child as their own person on their own unique path. We support them as their guide and gentle leader.
Simone Davies
Principles
First, the book explains the principles behind the Montessori. Before I read the book, I saw online that every Montessori playroom has beautiful and spacious shelves. On shelves were with big wooden tablets filled with expensive Montessori toys. That made me pretty sad. I knew I don’t have enough space to place that kind of shelf into our home. Also, my budget was tight. But when I understood the Montessori principles, it was much easier for me to start and to work with what I have. I was able to create a beautiful little playing corner for my little human. I also learned how to make simple Montessori activities that don’t need to be expensive. For example, rather than buying an expensive Montessori wooden coin box, you can cut a narrow slot into a shoebox.
Activities
After principles, the book explains what makes an activity Montessori. For me, this was the most useful chapter ever. I could see what kind of toys we already have and how can I make them more Montessori. When I started, I somehow assumed that every wooden, educational toy is Montessori. I even bought a few toys without even realizing that they are too complex and too distractive to allow my little human to master just one particular skill he is trying to master.
Montessori activities in the book are divided into five main areas:
- eye-hand coordination
- music and movement
- practical life
- arts and crafts
- language
For every area, you can see which kind of activities you can include in your shelf rotations. You also get tons of helpful tips that allow you to adjust certain activity to your child’s age. I am always struggling with coming up with new arts and crafts activities so I end up re-reading this chapter almost every week.
Rooms
In this chapter, you get the idea of how you can adjust every room in your home with the child’s needs in mind. You also get to see how other parents managed to adjust their homes to be Montessori. This was super helpful in order to find items for toddler-sized self-care area in our bathroom. We have the narrowest bathroom in the world so I couldn’t fit there anything I saw on Pinterest. After I read this chapter, I immediately ran to Ikea and came up with a cute little self-care corner. You can see how it turned out in this post. Our little human is super happy with it! Next on my to-do list is our entrance and then the kitchen. Stay tuned to see how it turned out!
And much, much more…
This alone was enough for me to start with Montessori and to feel much more confident with what I know and what I do in our daily life. But, besides that, I learned much, much more. I learned how to encourage curiosity in my little human, how to accept some of his behaviors, how to set limits, and cultivate cooperation in him. I even learned how to better take care of myself and fill my emotional bucket. So thank you, Simone, for writing this book, it was super helpful and it definitely changed our daily life!