5 Main Montessori Principles – Part 2

What do the 5 principles look like in daily life ?  Why should I follow them ? – Part 2

Step 3 – Prepare the Home Environment 

It is necessary to prepare your home so that it can be shared by your child if you wish to bring Montessori into daily life. It is important that your child feels that your home is their home and that they can explore and experience that home independently and safely.

Preparing your home to align with Montessori principles, means ensuring all toys, books, and puzzles are placed on a low enough shelf that your child can access them without help. This extends to clothing, bathroom activities and snacks.

What does this look like in the home

Montessori parents not only share their home with their children but their life. Being a Montessori parent means including and involving your child in the day-to-day activities of the home. Your child can help you prepare the evening meal, or help with the washing up. You will be surprised by the energy and focus they may use in the simplest of tasks. Cleaning, tidying, laying the table or feeding the cat are easy activities your child can complete. Participating in these activities safely gives them a sense of purpose and responsibility and helps them to feel part of their family.

Step 4  – Sensitive Periods

 Children have specific times in their life when they are drawn and attracted to specific skills and actions. These ‘sensitive periods’ are a ticking clock and the ability to absorb and master specific skills doesn’t often last forever.

Look at how children spontaneously start talking, crawling and walking. There is an impulse for them to do it and they love to practice!!  If you stopped your child walking when he was just getting going – he would not be happy, his skill in walking would decline and he would revert back to crawling. Less obvious but just as important periods in their life occur at fairly regular and predictable times.

What does this look like in the home?

To keep track of your child’s development you need to observe and then change your expectations to meet your child’s new abilities.  Knowledge  and understanding of your child learned from observations are invaluable during these times of huge development and change.

The Montessori lifestyle allow children to be themselves. It gives children the freedom to face challenges and overcome them, in a safe environment overlooked by caring adults. Children should be given the freedom to explore their interests and enjoy their own company as well as feeling involved in something bigger.

Step 5 – Auto or Self-Education

If you can follow and implement the 4 previous steps, This final piece of the Montessori puzzle should come very naturally. Montessori principles  offer the child chances for new experiences in a safe and successful environment. This means they learn to succeed and expect to succeed. Many Montessori materials are self-correcting and run from simple to complex. This is easy to continue in everyday life – especially when introducing and building up skills and experiences.

This wonderful spontaneous natural urge can be easily damaged. Blocking a child from activities he could achieve and over supporting him in his daily routine will often see children unwilling to eat new things, wear different clothes, go to new places or try new activities. A child not given a degree of freedom and time to explore on his own terms, will generally need adult help and supervision at all times. A child who is not learning discipline  and becoming normalised to his environment will struggle with social skills and confidence in himself and the world around him.

What does this look life in the home?

Giving your child the chance to find his level, to practice and move forward by himself is a powerful tool. It teaches that he is in control – he can get improve succeed and make greater connections with his environment. He can live and be independent. He is interested and excited by new things (which there are so many) and wants to investigate.