A tour of the Montessori room

I thought it was about time I did an update on this, plus I have nice new curtains that I want to show off!

Our Montessori room is also the guest room and it is supposed to be my craft room too but not much crafting actually goes on in there, maybe when I manage to get my sewing machine set up that will change. When we designed the house we had sliding doors put in between the guest room and Ebi-kuns bedroom so that it opens up into one big room, I love this set up, it makes it feel bigger and much more airy.  So, this is the view when I am standing in Ebi-kuns room.

I decided to move the shelves around a bit, this corner has the globes, the Montessori continents, land and water and a regular globe and I keep an atlas with them too. On the little shelves are the knob less cylinders and pattern extension cards and the bottom has the number rods.

The next two shelves are actually CD shelves so they are not really deep enough for some of the work. In a classroom I think it is important to keep the various sections of work together, language on one shelf, math on another but lack of space means that we have to just do with what we have but where possible I try and keep the equipment together. I have the bead material to go out but I haven't figured out how to display it all yet. On the top of these two shelves are the metal insets, then from the top left going down, some of the bead chains, decimal tray, addition tray, snake game and top right the stamp game, wooden numbers, trinominal cube, 100 squares, 1000 cubes and the geometric solids and 3 part cards in the box at the bottom. Between the two shelves are the brown/broad stair and the pink tower.

More metal insets on the top, top left origami paper for the metal insets and a nature basket with magnifying glass to study with, herbs and spices smelling bottles and cards, colour tablets box 3, parts of speech word cards for the farm and they are sat on the grammar symbols box, the box with the checkered lid is the farm (I will do another post on that), words and objects box for making sentences with and the bottom is the movable alphabet. Then the right.. slides for the microscope, model of a heart, model and 3 part cards for the internal organs, tap and make - hammer and coloured shapes of wood that you hammer to a cork board, frog activities, 3 part cards, life cycle, books and a game and bottom shelf is the clock and cards for telling time. To the right is the board for the metal insets and the animal and botany puzzles plus the mats.

 Then under the desk we have the continent puzzle maps, we don't have a rack for them so I just put out the map we are working on at the time, behind the maps is the microscope that my brother gave Ebi-kun and the red rods (he rarely uses the red rods but if he decides he wants them we can get them out easily) then knobbled cylinder blocks. These little draws are great, they have shelves on one side then pockets to put documents of books and more shelf space and draws on the third side plus they are on wheels so I can just turn them round when we have guests. Anyway, the one on the left has the continent folder, inside that are pictures, quizzes, work sheets and various other activities. The next shelf down has info cards, CDs and small objects from Africa and the bottom shelf has the continent cards and picture cards. I will add the flags for Africa one I have printed them out.

The other shelf has the self portrait work, below that the golf tee and marble activity - still a favourite and the nuts and bolts matching. I like to keep a couple of easy activities out, I find that after he has done some hard work he will pick something easy to wind down with before picking something more challenging again. The box shelves on the desk are actually book shelves but have a door on them which is perfect for displaying artwork and books of the moment. 

And that is about it! I think the hardest part about Montessori is trying to decide what needs to be out and what can be put away, I put the sandpaper letters and sound pouches away for the first time this week. I also feel that if you are new to Montessori and you see the list of equipment, it is enough to make you want to run to the hills. If you are starting out with a toddler then plenty of practical life and sensory work is what you need and in the mean time you can start putting together some of the other equipment. Now I know someone is bound to ask.... the materials I didn't make I bought at IFIT Montessori mainly because they had the cheapest shipping options, most of the equipment has been OK, some of the paint has chipped on the wooden materials and the paint is flaking on the metal insets, I suppose you get what you pay for!