Montessori At Home Mondays with Marie Mack
Small Space Montessori Setup
I am excited to be back for part three of our Montessori At Home Monday’s series. You can view part one and part two to catch up if you missed them!
The Children’s Room
Our children have shared a room since our daughter was 3 months old. There are many ways to help your children be comfortable sleeping together at a young age and I encourage you to research some techniques. A real quick note on helping your children share a room at a young age. Spend time with them in that room. Demonstrate appropriate behaviors and help them feel comfortable with the layout of the room. Doing this will give you peace of mind to know that your older child will act appropriately with an infant child when you are not in the room.
With that, here is their room! We adore the little kitchen. Since it is more of a pretend play activity, we chose to put it in their room. They were not disturbed by it being there, but used it to entertain themselves when they awoke. (As a note, be sure items like this are anchored to the wall so it doesnât fall on accident.) We added a small tray of empty, unused food bins to help with open and close activities.
Our daughterâs bed is a twin mattress on the floor. We have never had an issue with her being cold at night with the mattress directly on the floor, even in NY winter. Beside her bed is a child size table with drawer. This was specifically Avalynâs space. She kept her special items in the drawer (usually some kind of hair brush) and the books she was interested in on top.
Our sonâs bed is on a frame. This gave him a little of his own space since his sister couldnât get on the bed on her own.
As a way to continue our homeschool setup in the childrenâs room, we added another bookshelf. This too was FREE! Hand me down from my mother in law with new coat of paint.
We added a bath mat as a work space and kept some fine motor work in their room along with plenty of books!
Beside the shelf is a small treasure chest. This is for Samuelâs special things. Every boy needs a treasure chest!
The door you see leads to the only closet in the house.
The Closet
This walk-in closet proved to be extremely useful for our small space Montessori setup. Storage space, diaper changing area, and clothes storage for our family of four. We will look at only the childrenâs side.
The dresser in the closet is for the childrenâs clothes. I added a couple of hooks to the side for easy access for the children to hang their jackets. Avalynâs changing station consisted of a changing mat on the floor under their hanging clothes. Her diapers are in bins on top of the dresser.
Above their clothes is a high shelf. High shelves are a must have for small spaces. We stored all of the extra puzzles, baby memorabilia, games, and a couple baskets of those pesky toys that donât stack well. As you can see it is stacked to the ceiling, but it was great to have all the activities I wanted to switch out for the kids in the apartment. I would recommend fitting in a high shelf for storage in any small home.
Since Avalyn was still a little young to dress herself, we decided to put Samuelâs clothes in the bottom two drawers of the dresser. (Also, a hand me down! I love free!) We organized his clothes to be in a specific place. A place for everything and everything in its place has always worked well for our home. Sam was able to open and close these drawers on his own so this became another practical life area.
Check back next Monday for our Small Space Montessori Setup post where we will go over how we setup our bathroom to include a Montessori toilet learning space.
About Marie Mack
Marie is a work-at-home mother of two. After much self-study and with a background in education, she chose to follow her own children in their education and created the blog Child Led Life. She would love to hear from you on Facebook and Pinterest.
Where to Find Supplies
Many of the things you will need to make your home more Montessori and child friendly can be found easily at places like the Dollar Store, Target, and Walmart. You can also find a great selection of tools at For Small Hands, a company founded by a Montessori teacher.
