Steps to Make Your Home Montessori for Toddler

First of all, let's talk about why a Montessori home is a good idea. As Montessori has a famous quote "Help me to do it myself" and I believe this is the most important job as a parent that we have. Enabling a child to become independent and to do things for themselves is helping them grow as people and learn about their strengths, abilities and limits. The trouble is, these days we are all so busy, it's often easier just to do to for the toddler, and so the toddler doesn't learn and a few years down the line the toddler has grown into a child that expects their parents to do everything for Montessori, because that is the only way they know. So let's look at the pros and cons of ToddlerMontessori

PROS

•           Setting up your home in a Montessori Inspired way will mean...

•           The toddler can do more for themselves in Montessori

•           They learn to take things out and put things away by themselves

•           The child learns to be more self reliant and will happily push themselves further

•           It gives you more time because you are not endlessly picking up everyone else's crap!

•           There is less stress and fighting in the family, less nagging and bickering

CONS

•           If your children are older it will take some time to 're-train' them for Montessori

•           If you are starting now with a toddler, you will need to allow more time for doing even simple things like putting on shoes.

•           You will need to take some time, re-thinking the set up in your home Montessori for toddlers

As you can see, the pros very much outweigh the cons. So how do you start?

1. A Home for Everything

This sounds so obvious but I know from working with my clients that when they take a real long look at how their home is currently set up, their home for everything doesn't really exist. You need to make sure that everything really does have its own place and that everyone in the family knows where everything lives.

2. Take a Child's Eye View

Often parents get annoyed at the kids for not putting things away but the reality is that it is difficult so the child takes the easy route and leaves the toys strewn on the floor!

3. Make It about Them

Kids are little and so for them to be able to do what they need to do, they need to reach! Work your way through the house checking that your child can reach everything.

4. Less Is More

Too many books on the bookshelf make it difficult to take off and replace the books, instead of jamming all the books they own on the shelf, rotate the books, every couple of weeks switch out the old ones for some new ones to make it easy for toddler.