LJ's Montessori Toddler Room

We've been doing some re-arranging around here.  Both L and LJ have moved on to another stage of development and we needed to make some changes in their rooms to keep up with their needs. 

 

The first thing we did was to move the Ikea bunk bed frame that L was using into LJ's room.  A little modification and it makes the perfect toddler bed(and climbing frame)!  LJ is still able to enter and exit easily either by the little door or by just climbing over the edge but it is so perfect because it contains him while he is sleeping.  LJ watched the whole move and was absolutely beside himself when he realised that this was now going to be his bed!!

I love that he is now old enough to have blankets, stuffies and pillows.  It makes his sleeping space so much cosier. 

Beside his bed is a basket of books.

 

LJ's shelf area hasn't changed all that much.  I keep a few activities for him which he does when he wakes up or when he's not quite ready to sleep and sometimes he just spends time in his room on his own.  I've also moved the ball tracker into his room. 

 Although the ideal thing is to hang artwork etc. at your child's level I have tried time and again only to have it torn down and either ruined or risking an injury.  So in the end I settled on hanging this beautiful wool village scene I got from Ecuador just a little above his reach.  It is so colourful and vibrant and LJ can see it perfectly from his bed.

 

The other big change in LJ's room is the dressing area.  We have gotten rid of the change table and replaced it with this little shelf.  On the top we are trying out a little care of self area.  LJ can brush his hair and there is a little bowl that I put a tiny bit of water in for LJ to use for his washcloth.  I am trying out the mirror as well to see if he will leave it be or have it off the wall all of the time!

On the bottom shelves I put out his outfit for the day.  I will leave giving him a choice of two outfits for a couple more months or I know he will just try to put everything on!

Once again there is a tiny stool to sit on while getting dressed but at the moment he just uses it to jump into his bed!

He also has his laundry basket where he puts all of his dirty clothes.

So there it is.  Still very simple and uncluttered.  It is also still my favourite room in our house, so calm and peaceful.  Now if only I can get L's room to have the same feel.....

Montessori Shelves and Using a Work Mat

Little J is sixteen months now.  L is back at school and we have managed to get back into some kind of routine.

Now that LJ and I have time in the morning to ourselves I have set up specific shelves for his "Montessori" works.  There is really not much difference between these activities and the ones in his cubicle shelves, however what is totally different is the process in which he does them.

I wanted to introduce a separate area so LJ could understand that anything taken from these shelves needs to be done in a certain way.

As you can see on the right of the first picture he now has a basket with work mats in it.  When first introducing a new work on these shelves I introduced the use of a work mat.  LJ gets the work mat and I help him roll it out.  He then goes to the shelves and selects a work.  It is important that he takes the whole basket or work and brings it over to the mat.  He then must take the work out of the basket to do it.  After he is finished he must put the work back into the basket and return it to the shelf before selecting another work. 

At this point I am not so interested in the actual works he is doing as the whole process.  What is important is that LJ knows he needs to use a work mat to do one of the works on his Montessori shelves.  It is also important to take the whole work over to the mat and of course to return it to the shelf.  I was quite surprised how quickly LJ took to the whole process.  Of course I am there to give him a gentle reminder to bring the whole basket or to help him remember to put the whole work away before getting another but in general he does really well.  I am also there to supervise if things start to go a bit "crazy"  I just sit back quietly and observe and only step in if I must say if he starts walking away from the mat with part of the work.

 

I generally keep four different works on the "Montessori shelves" and rotate one out every couple of days.  I've also found that once his Montessori work time is over (which is decided by himself) I remove the baskets from the shelves.  I've found that this helps in not having him continually go back to them and take pieces out later in the day.  If he would like to do more work and we both have some free time then he will get his work mat out and point to where I keep the baskets.

 The "Mystery" Bag.  Later on this is used to stimulate the stereognostic sense by having the child locate a known item in the bag without looking.  At the moment LJ is just using it as a bag of discovery although I think he will be soon ready to try the "mystery" aspect.

 Color matching.  I got these little wooden cups and bulbs from the craft store and painted them as shown.  The object is to match the colored bulb with the pot.  I decided to just paint the inside of the pots with the color to make it more of a challenge.  LJ mostly loves to manipulate these and sometimes matches the colors depending on what type of mood he is in!

 

We are blessed with living very close to a wonderful market that has goats on the roof, fresh fruits and veggies, yummy ice creams and best of all tons of super cool wooden toys.  I have to restrain myself every  time I go there to not buy up the store!

This adorable little fishing game came from the market.  LJ loves it and so does L.  This is quite a process to set up as he has to remove the "water" then add the fish before he can go fishing.  Once he has caught a fish he must put it in the red bucket.  LJ does this work several times throughout the morning.

 Lacing beads.  I wasn't sure if he was ready for this but low and behold he is!  It took him a little while to work out after several demonstrations but he is now able to make necklaces.  I taped a piece of straw onto the end of the shoelace with yellow tape to help LJ push it through the bead and also for him to easily locate the correct end.

 

I introduced a basket of wooden African animals along with smaller plastic animals for matching.  LJ knows the names of all of them so I figured matching wouldn't be much of a problem.  I made the mistake of saying can you find the mommy zebra.  Well that started off a frenzy of mommy and baby kissing as well as LJ kissing all of the mommy animals.  Seriously too cute!

 LJ loves to roll up his mat and put it away.  We sing a little roll, roll, roll song as he does it.