Living Montessori Now

Montessori Inspiration for Parents and Teachers

How to Start Using Montessori at Home

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It seems overwhelming, I know. There are so many amazing Montessori activities and resources online, books to buy, and materials to make and buy. So, what should you do first? What’s the best way to start using Montessori at home?

How to Start Using Montessori at Home

I am sometimes amazed at how many resources are available on my site alone – and I link to TONS more. It becomes difficult to find them all among the many blog posts after awhile. So, here, I’ll try to put an order to some of the posts I think are most helpful if you’re trying to get started using Montessori at home for a child from birth-6. This applies to parents, grandparents, and anyone who has a special role in a child’s life.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).

First, read this post:

Top 10 Montessori Principles for Natural Learning

Top 10 Montessori Principles for Natural Learning

Next, if you have an infant or are expecting an infant, read these posts:

How to Prepare a Montessori Baby Room

How to Prepare a Montessori Baby Room

How to Set Up Your Home for an Infant by Using Montessori Principles

Preparing a Montessori Newborn Baby Space at Home

Preparing a Montessori Newborn Baby Space at Home

How to Use Montessori Mobiles to Encourage a Newborn Baby’s Development and Delight

Preparing a Montessori Baby Space with Shelves at Home

Prepare a Montessori Baby Space in Your Living Room

How to Make a Treasure Basket for Your Baby

Variety of posts about babies (choose which are most relevant for you right now)

If you have a toddler, read this post:

How to Prepare a Montessori Toddler Environment at Home

How to Prepare a Montessori Toddler Environment at Home

Variety of posts about toddlers (choose which are most relevant for you right now)

If you have a preschooler, read this post:

How to Set Up a Montessori Space at Home

How to Set Up a Montessori Space at Home

Montessori-Inspired Unit Studies + Seasonal and Holiday Activities

Here you’ll find lots of activities and unit studies that are especially good for preschoolers through early elementary

Now, try to follow at least one of the Montessori principles that works for your child’s age and developmental level. Do it today. Don’t wait to start using Montessori at home.

Next, add to your knowledge, materials, and activities.

Gradually, start using more of the Montessori principles and activities. Add any Montessori-inspired activities online that you feel drawn to.

It’s impossible to do every wonderful Montessori idea available, so pick activities you think will be interesting and meet your child’s developmental needs. Often, you’ll feel drawn to preparing certain activities but not others.

For an infant, check out my baby posts.

For activities for infants or toddlers, check out the posts and links in my infant and toddler category.

For a toddler, check out my toddler posts.

If you’re interested in starting a Montessori homeschool or just in using a number of Montessori-inspired activities at home, you’ll find lots of ideas and links to resources in these posts:

How to Set Up a Montessori Preschool Classroom at Home

How to Set Up a Montessori Homeschool Classroom (with lots and lots of resources and links within links!)

Montessori-Inspired Outdoor Environment

Buy and start using activities from Montessori books:

Books by Maria Montessori are wonderful, but they are more abstract than many parents want in the beginning. To start using Montessori at home, my two favorite books for parents are below. You can’t go wrong in buying both:

How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin

How To Raise An Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin (for birth-age 6). Here’s a review I wrote: How to Raise an Amazing Child the Montessori Way (Book Review).

More Helpful Resources

Montessori at Home eBook and Materials BundleThe Montessori at Home eBook and Materials Bundle are available exclusively at Living Montessori Now! You can learn more here.

If you’d like actual Montessori teaching manuals and a clear, systematic Montessori teaching approach from Association Montessori International teacher training, I recommend Montessori Print Shop’s primary teaching manuals for ages 2½ -6. You’ll find my review of them here: Montessori Print Shop Primary Teaching Manuals Review.

You’ll find lots of free Montessori scope and sequence resources for planning and record keeping here.

You’ll find free Montessori materials online here

You’ll find free Montessori elementary materials online here.

Just start doing some activities and add on as you’re able. Again, you don’t need to have a perfect setup to start. As the slogan goes: Just do it!

If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, read Don’t Be Afraid to Start Using Montessori at Home.

Preparing Montessori Spaces in Your Home

See “How to Create a Montessori-Friendly Home” for ideas for a number of levels. Here are some of my main home environment posts here:

I’d love to hear how you started or plan to start using Montessori at home! 🙂

Deb - Signature

Learn more about my eBook Montessori at Home or School: How to. Teach Grace and Courtesy!

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jessica says

    Hi Deb,

    I have just posted my curriculum on my blog, then I noticed your post 🙂 Quite timely for me 🙂

    Just wanted to ask your opinion on the widely available home montessori sets like the mini knobbed cylinder and smaller version of the pink tower. Are they good enough for home use or would the difference in size matter?

    Eagerly awaiting your reply. Thanks

    Reply

    • Deb says

      Thanks so much for your comment, Jessica! It’s great that you’re planning out your curriculum so thoroughly!

      I’m glad Jennifer from Montessori Print Shop was able to respond to your question. I haven’t actually had experience with the mini materials. My first thoughts were questions were about difficulties for children developing fine-motor coordination. I also thought about the wonderful printables that are available for sensorial extensions. They’re created for the larger materials. So I would tend to go with the standard-sized materials. Jennifer’s experience confirms that, too. I love that she has experience with other problems of the mini materials, such as their being too light and not mathematically correct.

      Reply

  2. Montessori Print Shop says

    I know this post will be very, very helpful to so many people Deb. I’ll definitely add a link to this on our Using Montessori at Home articles – thank you!

    To Jessica – Not to overshadow Deb’s opinion (she’s not had a chance to answer your question yet), but I’ve handled both the regular and the ‘mini’ sized Montessori sets and in my opinion there is a huge difference between the two. Both the size and the weight of the materials helps to give the child the sensorial impressions. The mini materials simply don’t offer the same impressions. They aren’t mathematically correct, and the pieces are just too light in weight. As well, many of the pieces are so small they’re definitely a choking hazard.
    When I’ve put Toddler rooms together for schools, I’ve used the regular materials but only used cylinder blocks B & C, the first 5 red rods, pink tower cubes 5 thru 9, etc. This have given the toddlers an introduction to the materials that they could physically manage, and help reduce the possibility of choking on small pieces. When they join the Casa (primary) class, they are somewhat familiar with a few of the sensorial materials – but have a new challenge with all of the pieces now being available.

    Reply

    • Deb says

      Thanks, Jennifer! I really appreciate your linking to my post! And I really appreciate your insights into the mini materials. I haven’t had personal experience with them, but I was hesitant because of fine-motor difficulties and the thought that the awesome printables for extensions (such as your sensorial materials) would be a different size. It’s so helpful to have information on the other problems associated with the mini materials!

      Reply

    • Deb says

      Thanks so much for your kind words, John! I wish I would have had more photos of our Montessori activities and environment. I’m just able to sprinkle them through posts here and there (wasn’t a blogger back then and didn’t have that many photos of our Montessori activities). Of course, you can only take just so much of looking at that 70’s carpet! I’m thankful that so many bloggers have given me permission to use their photos! It’s amazing how many awesome Montessori home environments are shared online now. I definitely love doing research and sharing my finds! 🙂

      Reply

  7. Jessica says

    Jennifer: Thanks so much for the prompt reply. I was worried about the same issues because I have the mini knobbed cylinders and I thought they were pretty useless 🙂

    Deb: Thanks for your feedback 🙂 I was thinking about the possibility of choking as well. Will stick to the actual size materials.

    Reply

    • Deb says

      The mini materials would have some advantages of price and saving shelf space, but I think the disadvantages definitely outweigh the advantages. And the choking hazard would be a real problem with toddlers. I was so glad to hear about Jennifer’s actual experiences with the materials. It’s always good to now what to recommend – and what not to recommend! 🙂

      Reply

  9. Lulu says

    Whoops, commented on an older post that you linked to from here. Loved this post and the one I commented on though about a toddler environment at home. Working towards it here!!

    I am struggling with my 22 month old`s jealousy towards his little brother and his other “quirks”- I love my boys I do but they are both so exhausting and I find myself losing my cool a lot when that is definitely NOT the type of mother I want to be. Would love to hear your thoughts on how to deal with two kids so close in age {12 months apart} and also what you would do or what the montessori approach would be for kids that are violent {22 month old bites and hits me, throws things in rages, pushes his brother over etc..}

    I have montessori at home {old edition} and how to raise an amazing child! Love both!

    Reply

    • Deb says

      Thanks for your comment, Lulu (I just found these comments). I used logical consequences and Parent Effectiveness Training techniques a lot if there were problems. Here are the posts I’ve written on discipline: https://livingmontessorinow.com/category/discipline/.

      In Montessori, lots of practical life activities help develop self control, which helps prevent discipline problems. When a child does hurt someone or disrupt others, he or she is typically asked to work alone for awhile until he or she is ready to interact nicely with others. I hope that helps.

      Reply

    • Deb says

      Thanks for your comment, Candi! I was definitely lucky to have been trained in Montessori before my kids were born. But love goes a long way, too. 🙂

      Reply

  13. Jennifer Altman says

    So glad to have read the comments about the mini ones, I was considering purchasing the mini cylinders with knobs….will be rethinking that now! I was just getting ready to do a blog post on doing Montessori in everyday life, it’s amazing how many ‘Montessori’ type things I was doing with my kids just day to day and not even realizing that I was doing ‘Montessori’…..

    Reply

    • Deb says

      Thanks, Jennifer! I always find it amazing to realize how many Montessori principles really are a part of natural learning. Makes sense when the method was developed by observing children! 🙂

      Reply

  14. Yasmeen Warsi says

    Thank you for such a great help. Beautiful post, keep up the good work. My son is in elementary school (grad 5), but i still use Montessori ways to teach him maths.

    Reply

    • Deb says

      Thanks for your kind comment, Yasmeen! How wonderful that you’re using Montessori methods to teach math! I can’t think of a better way for a child to truly understand math concepts. 🙂

      Reply

  15. Sofia's Ideas says

    I must confess that I don’t know much about Montessori at all, even though my sister taught at a Montessori based school for about a year, AND my husband went to Montessori school when he was very little. I’ve always been intrigued, and even remark to my husband that I think it would suit one of our children, and that I should look into it. This gives me exactly what I needed! Thank you for this great collection of resources! 🙂

    Reply

  17. amanda says

    Why do most of your link titles have a line through them? Do u not recommend them or.is your page just displaying oddly from my phone?

    Reply

    • Deb says

      Hi, Amanda! My computer doesn’t show a line through any of the links, so it must just be how it’s showing up on your phone. I’m hoping the links work for you anyway.

      Reply

  18. Ella says

    Thank you so much for the information you provided! The website is so rich in its content. I have a 7 year old and a 2.8 year old boy. I have so much in my head for them that I don’t know where to start…you website is helping me a lot. Thank you again!

    Reply

  19. Trisha says

    I am a young mother of identical twin girls, and I’ve always been inspired by the Montessori teachings. My girls are 17 months and through my attachment parenting and redirection my girls have meet every milestone despite being born a month early. I want to start homeschooling them and that’s how I stumbled upon this blog. My greatest struggle at home is organization my girls love to explore which I encourage, but they take things apart and leave them. For awhile I thought have an orderly home was just not going to be possible if I want to encourage them to explore things. However all these pictures show a neat and orderly environment so where do I start? Open to all suggestions.

    Reply

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