For a peaceful home, for a peaceful world
With the festive season fast approaching, I have updated my Montessori-friendly gift guide. I hope you find it useful! Below are a selection of toys I feel pretty sure would be welcomed by any family with an interest in the Montessori ethos – or actually, any family at all. They are well made, beautiful, mostly made of…
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Frida is 21 months, and does very little in the way of working with traditional Montessori materials at the moment. She’s outgrown her infant materials, and is still too young for most materials geared towards the 3-6 plane of development. What she does do a lot of, though, is practical life, which I believe to…
Read MoreLast week at Frida’s playgroup we made a jar lantern together, and it was such a lovely and simple craft to do that I wanted to encourage you to have a go! To make the simplest jar lantern, all you need is: a clean jar; some tissue paper; some clear drying (child safe!) glue; and…
Read MoreWe’ve all been laid up indoors for the last few days as the whole family has caught a nasty bug that’s been going round. My mum and my mother-in-law have both been a huge help, looking after Frida whilst my husband and I were stuck in bed, making me feel very lucky that we have…
Read MoreBack in January I wrote a blog post about trying to make the space in our dining room more baby-friendly. I’ve made more changes to the room since – I painted a blackboard wall in April, and slowly the shelves in the dining room were given over solely to art materials as her toys moved…
Read MoreIt probably won’t surprise you to know that I am a big fan of attachment parenting – and more generally, doing what feels instinctively “right” to me. As such, we have bed-shared with Frida from birth (genuinely from birth – the midwives in hospital were horrified at my shunning the cold plastic crib in order…
Read MoreFrida uses her Schleich farm animals a lot – it’s rare that a day goes past without them being pulled out. They are great for imaginative play, small world play, sorting and categorising, and for developing her vocabulary. I love how realistic they are too. Without really thinking about it I’d realised that we use…
Read MoreAnyone who reads my blog regularly will know that I am a big believer in going outside as much as possible. We try and get outside at least once a day, whatever the weather, to a park or playground or common or farm, or even just for an exploratory walk around the block. Last week…
Read MoreI have finally done a bit of (very overdue!) toy rotation in Frida’s room. As Frida has gotten older I’ve found that I’ve naturally rotated her toys less, as she’s played with things in new ways, and has also focused on gross motor skills and language acquisition rather than on materials so she’s gotten bored…
Read MoreA few weeks ago the lovely Simone from The Montessori Notebook asked me if I would like to share a little bit about us and our home on her beautiful website. A big fan of her blog, I was delighted to accept. You can read the full piece on The Montessori Notebook here. Thank you…
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