
- Maria Montessori
Hello, everyone! It's almost spring by us and the weather is so lovely right now. I thought I'd take this opportunity to share our Montessori homeschool space for our 4 little ones, all of which are in the first plane of development. Our oldest daughter just completed her 5th trip around the sun (Yay!) and since she's starting Lower Elementary (1st Grade) in the fall, I thought this would be a good time to share a snapshot in time of where we're at after 3 years of Primary Montessori Homeschool studies. First, I'm going to start off with a bit of background.
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Background
We took a formal Montessori homeschool course for the Primary years (3 - 6) in the beginning of 2018, knowing our daughter would begin in the fall of that year. While taking the homeschool course is when we began gathering the primary materials we wanted for our daughter and all her younger siblings who would soon follow. Using our scope and sequence for the primary years, we came up with a plan for what we wanted and then basically executed it within our budget. If you want to know how we did it, that info is in this post.
We knew that we wanted to meet our children where they were at. Also, we wanted to shoot for the highest-fidelity Montessori environment and experiences we could achieve, knowing that statistically it supports the outcomes we were looking for. Finally, we knew that we didn't want any unnecessary expenses to weigh us down in the process.
Our Strategy for Success
1) Taking a homeschooling course and having the guidance of a mentor - Probably the most important for avoiding buyer's remorse or a confusing roadmap
2) No emotional purchases or impulse buys - We enjoy our minimalist lifestyle and didn't want to stray from that
3) Only Montessori materials or Montessori-compatible purchases - We don't have a cabinet or toy chest or room filled with fantasy-based toys or those electronic toys with the flashing lights for our first plane kids. Our oldest daughter just recently received a set of readers from us with anthropomorphism (funny talking animals) and she's starting lower elementary in the fall.
4) Choosing what we thought was of the most value to our children's education, whether that means encouraging the most interest or providing the most versatile opportunities for learning
5) Identifying which materials we thought would get the most long-term use
You may find that you don't need to do any of these things but this is how it's been an affordable and pleasant experience for us while growing our family and our $avings.
If you've read our previous posts, you've seen most of these items before. We've been collecting mostly books and the rest of our continent resources since the pandemic started, so I'm sure we may have done some things differently had we started our journey in 2020 and that would've been just fine too.
So here we are! My husband jokingly refers to Montessori as a euphemism for heavy projectile so this post is one of his favorites already. Let's get started!
First, I'll show you what's in our environment and then I'll show you what a rotation looks like for us right now.
Our Montessori Homeschool Space
- Pink Tower
- Brown Stairs
- Knobless Cylinders
- Knobbed Cylinders
- Geometric Solids and some Sorting/Nomenclature printables
- Constructive Triangles
- Geometric Cabinet & Form Cards
- Landform Cards
- Globe
- Continent Puzzle
- Continent Boxes
Math
- Colored bead hangers, our Sandpaper Numbers 11 - 20, and a Chameleon Number Puzzle
- Teen Boards and Ten Boards, our Hundred Board, and a Hundred Board Extension we rotate.
- The Exchange Game, Operations with the Golden Beads and printable equations, Addition Strip Board, the Addition Snake Game
- Montessori Learning Clock, Fraction Skittles and Fractions Sorting Game, Short Bead Chains & Squares, Multiplication Bead Board, Multiplication Snake Game
Language
- Animalium Tropical Forest postcard
- Amphibian nomenclature cards
- Frog Life Cycle figures with Nature Anatomy book
- Frog puzzle
- Parts of an Amphibian Nomenclature
Toddler Shelf
- Apple threader
- Shape Sorter (circles and squares right now)
- Screw People (lol)
- a basket of soft toys for our almost 5 month old
- missing Melissa & Doug Gears our daughter walked away with
- Magnetic Fishing Game
Additional Art/Science/Geography in Our Montessori Homeschool Space
- Paper Organizer
- Solar System mat
- Celebration Sun
- Water Cycle work
- Air, Land, & Water materials
- Landform materials
- Animal Classification nomenclature
- Botany & Zoology puzzles
- Parts of a... Nomenclature
- Biome Stamps
- Continent Biome Puzzles
- Continent Readers
A Rotation:
Other Items in Our Montessori Homeschool Space:
- Bookshelves and Bins - We have several throughout our home and our kids are never too far from something constructive to read
- Writing/Art Cabinet - I'm going to share an update on this and our Art/Handwriting materials
- Practical Life - we keep these items in the applicable rooms
- We keep additional printables, puzzles, toddler toys, baby items, Continent nomenclature, and math works around the house and stored for rotation as needed.
- We keep our Barn, Schleich farm animals, and dinosaurs together upstairs
- I did purchase some of what i jokingly call doomsday curriculum on clearance, in the event everything came to a halt during this pandemic and services or goods were scarce. I have that squirreled away just in case. Yes, I'm that person. π