The prepared environment-It works!

Most people who've worked in a Montessori environment will read the title of this post and say "Well duh!" and I also obviously know how important it is.  Over the past month the importance of having that prepared environment has really been emphasised.

Before Sweetpea came to us she was looked after by her Dad(while her Mama was courageously teaching L and her classmates).  I believe they had basically quiet days with a strong routine.

When Sweetpea first came it was obviously a huge adjustment for her.  Everything in her little world was new.  The people, environment and routine.  Sweetpea is a very happy, sweet natured little thing and adjusted really quickly.

 

I did observe that in the first couple days she would just go from one thing to the next not spending more than a second or two with each item.  She would mostly go through all of the materials pulling them off the shelves and hucking them out of the baskets.  Now this is completely normal behaviour for a 12 month old however I knew she was capable of really using the materials for their purpose.  I would introduce a material to her but she would quickly loose interest and move on to something else before I'd finished the short presentation.  It was tempting to figure she was bored and just wanted new things to explore, however all of my reading and some advice from the wonderful Pilar (The Full Montessori) made me stick to my guns and just let her continue to explore and get used to the materials that were on the shelves.  By the end of the second week I was already noticing a change in her interaction with the materials.  Instead of just moving quickly from one item to another she was beginning to experiment with things.  Oh this goes in here, if I do this this happens.

It was super exciting the first time she realised the could fit the cylinder into the imbucare box.  Last week while I was in hospital she completely mastered it and can now also do the rectangular prism.

 

Sweetpea is taking more care with the items and figuring out how they work and what they will do.  For example instead of just pulling the stacking cups off the shelf she will carefully pull out one by one and then work out how they fit back into each other.  There are obviously some items which hold her interest more than others.

Sweetpea now feels completely at home and comfortable in this environment and her growth and exploration is amazing.  I usually switch out one material a week or add an extension material if she's mastered something.  I will do an upcoming post on what each baby is working on.

 

Baby J loves having Sweetpea here and is totally spurred on to try and do what she is able to do.  He is desperate to move like she does.  It is wonderful to see them interacting together and a favourite game is to hand things back and forth to each other.

 

Here are a few pics of Baby J at work.

 

 

Another note on the environment.  Obviously it can get pretty messy at times but I try to put things back as they have moved on to something else so that the babies are used to seeing the environment always in order.

 

Making Lunch

L has been asking to make her own lunch lately.  She asked if I could give her a shelf in the fridge to be able to access her own things.  So here it is.  Luckily she has basically the same things every day for lunch so it was easy.

The staples are usually baby carrots, cucumber, baby tomatoes and pita bread.  We also switch it up with pea pods, cheese, eggs, muffins and hummus sometimes.

L gets out all of her lunch food from the fridge and puts it on the counter.  She then gets her stool and a plate from her cupboard and gets to work.

Don't forget the clean up and putting the food back into the fridge.  L clears her plate into the green bin and puts it in the dishwasher(hopefully!).

I've also set up a bit of a snack shelf in the pantry where L can get her porridge oats, cranberries and container of Heritage O's, coconut and cranberries which she can scoop into the smaller dish.  She also has yogurt and cheese in the side shelf of the fridge and a fruit bowl on the kitchen table.
L's is beside herself with pleasure at being able to make her own lunch.  What an independent girl!

L's New Bedroom

L has never really had her own bedroom before.  We decorated a nursery for her in our house in England but there was no built in heater in it so she ended up sleeping in our bedroom the whole time we were there.  Once we moved in with my mom they had to share a bedroom.

Finally in our new house she has a whole room all to herself!  It was my top priority once we moved in to make L's room as special as we could for her.

So here it is!

I tried to keep it as Montessori friendly as possible.  All of the artwork and mirrors are at her level.  She has her book shelf in here with a chair for reading or she can chill out on the bottom bunk.  She also has her little kitchen and all of her food in here to play with.

I love her little canopy bed.  It's so magical when we put the lights on at night.  L is over the moon with the whole thing and takes the bed safety rules very seriously, always climbing down the stairs backwards.

L's new environment Part 2

Okay part two.  The first two pictures are of L's activity shelves in our spare bedroom.  I'll do a quick run down on what is on the shelves at this particular time.  Some activities are always there and some I constantly change up.

The top shelf holds a baskets of my crafting supplies.  The next shelf down is L's craft shelf which holds different kinds of paper and coloring books, crayons, markers, pencil crayons, stamps and ink, scissors, glue sticks and chalk.  She is also allowed access into my baskets if she needs something specific.

The next shelf is her language shelf which holds her handwriting binder, language activities, upper and lower case letters, chalk board and chalk and her eye spy bottle. This shelf gets changed up every week or so.

Second from the bottom is her games and puzzles shelf.  L loves puzzles so we have tons of them.  I have them all out because she uses all of them.

The bottom shelf holds her Lego, wooden blocks in the bag and her other puzzles. Her work mats are to the right of the shelves.

 The second set of shelves.  From the top are all of her board type games.  Next is her "science and geography shelf"  This shelf also changes but at the moment is has her bug viewer, animals and insects and also her Leap Frog globe.  We LOVE this.  I'm usually not a fan of these kind of things but I found it at a boot fair for $2 so I couldn't resist.  You place the pen on the picture and it tells you all about the animals and places on the globe. 

The bottom shelf holds her puppets and shadow puppet theatre.  This also changes depending on what we're working on.  Next to the shelves are my super messy activity drawers where I store all of our past activity materials.

 The living room is still a work in progress but at the moment we have L's table for crafts and activities, her easel(with just crayons and pencil crayons! I'm not going any further with that white carpet underneath!).  For the moment we also have her instrument basket here until we get the music room set up properly.  I'm also planning to put our new nature table in the bay window.

I'm setting up a special space for L in each of the rooms in the house.  In part three I will hopefully have L's snack space, the music room and L's new bedroom which we are painting next weekend.

I'm also almost finished our Australia continent box and will be posting about our activities some time this week.

L's new environment Part 1

I'm so happy to finally have proper spaces for L's things.  Our house is mostly unpacked so I wanted to record how we have set up L's spaces to enable her to have as much independence as possible.

Kitchen

This is my favorite room for L other than her bedroom.  She has her own cupboard where she can set her own place, get her aprons for baking and cooking and also her cooking utensils.  There are cloths for clean up and for use at meals.

We also have a dishwasher(yoohoo!)which L puts her dirty dishes into after her meals and is able to unload her clean dishes into her cupboard (when she so feels that is!) She also loves to put in the washing powder and turn it on.

 Beside the table is her stool and her bucket with her mop, dustpan and broom and head for her long broom.  She is able to sweep up crumbs and mop up spills, like the drink she spilled all over the floor yesterday!

 The best bit is the water dispenser in the fridge door!  Liquid independence!

We also have a wonderful pantry which will eventually have a shelf for L's snacks as well as a fridge with low shelves to hold L's cold snacks.

 Hall Closet

L has her own hooks to hang her jackets on when she comes in and is able to put her shoes on the low rack.  There is a basket for her hats and mits.

 L's bedroom closet

This is one of the first spaces I organised when we moved in.  It's so important for L to have a place for all of her clothes so she can get dressed in the morning.  The blue hanging organiser has compartments for (starting at the bottom)tights and undershirts, underwear and socks, pj's, and bathing suits.

The low rack holds her tops and pants.  L is able to hang up her dresses and jackets on hangers now(thanks to school).

L is soooo proud to have her own laundry basket that she can carry to the laundry room.  She helped me do laundry the other day and put away all of her clean clothes.  Lets see how long that continues!

So that is the end of part one.  Part two will have L's spaces for activities in our house.

L's new environment (long)

A little while ago I received a comment asking how I set up L's shelves and how we schedule our day. I've taken some pictures of our initial set up in our new home. This is still a work in progress but here is what we have so far.

L's activity shelves are in the office/study with the computer and piano. On these three shelves she has her activities. On the bottom shelf are her instruments and puppets. On the second shelf are her lacing beads, Christmas tree activity and a phonics matching activity. On the third shelf is her phonics box with sandpaper letters, Russian doll, button snake and puzzles basket. I will change these up as I make new activities and others get old. The puzzle basket and instruments will always stay.

On these shelves I have some activities and also her toys. My mom rocks and saved all of our now retro Fisher Price toys! She's also got her animals, frogs and insects in separate baskets plus her dominoes, dressing board and Melissa and Doug Rainforest puzzle. I will also change these up every few weeks. Her new floor mat is rolled in the corner.

The kitchen is a work in progress. This is her shelf for setting the table. Unfortunately we still don't have a small table for her so she is sitting up at the big table for all of her meals and snacks. This is fine for when we all eat together but allows her less independence. At the moment she only partially sets her table sometimes but we are working on it as she settles in more. She also sometimes clears her dishes into the dishwasher and cleans her place. She now has a little cloth on a plate that she has out at every meal to clean her mouth and hands and the table.

I love this bit. My mom has a huge closet and L has a whole side to herself. Her socks and underwear are in a basket and all of her swimming stuff is in another basket. Now I have to say that up until today she has had absolutely NO interest in getting dressed or getting her own clothes. It has been a nightmare trying to get her dressed every day. Today however for some reason she actually showed an interest in putting on her own clothes! Wonder of wonder.

I hope eventually to have her pick her own clothes and also help to put the clean ones away. She loves to put the dirty ones in the laundry basket.

This is also a new and really cool thing for us. We just set up our cloakroom with a low hanging rack for L's coats. She can now get them and hang them up herself and she also has her hats, mits and scarves in a basket.

Basically I think the most important thing is that everything has it's own place that she can access and it is always kept there. As time goes on and L gets older she will hopefully do more and more things for herself.

As for our routine. We we totally don't have one. We never really have. L's activities are always accessible to her and when she brings one out I will sit with her or get her started. Sometimes this is hard because I want to do something else. Sometimes I will just say no we can't do those right now but we can do them at this time. I will also instigate activity time when we have a set free period throughout the day. Like tonight she did four activities with extreme concentration just before she went to bed. It works for us.

As for just beginning with a 3 year old I would take it very slow, set aside a shelf just for Montessori and set out one activity at a time. After you've introduced it he can take it out whenever he likes as long as he puts it away when he's done. Every day you can put a new activity out so he looks forward to seeing what is out. Once he gets the idea you can add another one. Just make it clear these are not toys but activities and need to be used in the proper way.

You can also start with Practical Life activities and slowly get him to do more and more things by himself. Prepare his environment so he can do things on his own. It's a slow process so don't expect too much at once. Hope this helps a bit.

I'd also recommend reading this post from What Did we do all day?