We started our second year of homeschooling! Last year around this time, I was slightly overwhelmed and feeling anxious about the year ahead 🙂 but this year, I’m feeling pretty good about our rhythm in place, and our prepared environment. I thought I would share our main homeschool/play/work environment.
Sometimes it’s fun to follow a theme and soon, I’ll probably switch to fall & leaves. But right now, it’s mostly set up to encourage us to get back into completing a Montessori work cycle (a chunk of time, typically 3-hours, spent working without interruptions.)
Since Javi is at school full-time, this space is mostly set up with Lola (3.9) and Eva (21 months) in mind AND we’re really excited to have an almost 3 year old friend join us a few mornings a week!
Here are our shelves right now: (this post contains affiliate links at no cost to you, however, if you make a purchase I may earn a commission.)
This shelf houses mostly materials for Eva though the bigger kids are interested in many of these activities, too!
Top shelf: basket of instruments
Second shelf: circle puzzle, flashlight, object permanence box with drawer
Third shelf: smartmax magnets, ring stacker, fish puzzle, coin box
Bottom shelf: ring slide, stacking stones, shape puzzle, lock box
I moved the Nugget into this room at the beginning of summer and it’s worked so well, that I’ve decided to keep it in here. It’s great to build forts and to curl up and read books. I also moved all the baby dolls and the kitchen set into the corner. They also have out the Farm and these animals.
I wanted to be sure to include all the typical Montessori curriculum areas.
Top shelf/Practical Life: apple tree work, spooning, pouring water
Middle shelf/Language: object to picture matching, sequencing puzzles, auditory games with an auditory feedback phone, rhyming, initial sounds with Sandpaper Letters
Bottom shelf/Science: parts of a tree puzzle, parts of a leaf puzzle, 3 part cards for life cycle of an apple tree
Top shelf/Practical Life: tonging, key box, screwdriver board
Middle shelf/Geography: land, air and water containers (with mat hanging on the wall), globe, continent map (not linking the globe and the map because I don’t totally love them)
Bottom shelf/Building materials: magnatiles, duplo legos, marble run
This shelf has our nature supplies and our math work.
Top shelf/Nature: nature collection box, basket of nature tools, fairy garden
Middle shelf/Math: 1:1 correspondence, 1-10 clip cards
Bottom shelf/Math: 1-9 hanging beads, pretend cash register
Side shelf/Math: Short Chains (set up backwards but the kids did it and I don’t have the heart to correct them!)
On this shorter shelf, I have Sensorial materials.
Top shelf: Pink Tower, Brown Stairs
Middle shelf: Knobbed Cylinders, Knobless Cylinders, Color Roll
Bottom shelf: touch and match board, peekaboo sound boxes
I also reorganized all the dress-up clothes into these bins so that it was all easy to clean-up.
Lastly, when I shared these pictures on instagram, a lot of people wanted to see what was out for Javi!
So this shelf is sort of everything else!
Top shelf: storage!
Second shelf: Javi’s favorite things! I’ll do a post soon of what he’s most interested in as he’s nearly SIX but be assured, there’s no shortage of materials for all the kids
Middle shelf: Mostly stuff for me (my Montessori albums are in the cabinets)
Fourth + Bottom shelf: all our books!
When I rotate, I do tend to rotate much or all of what is out but I’m not on any specific rotation schedule so I’m not sure when it’ll happen! I think next week, I’ll share our art space because that’s another area where we spend a lot of time.
How does your space look this month?
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