With Henry, I had absolutely no idea what Montessori was before he was around 13-14 months old. He was around 18 months when we really started to shift our home in a Montessori direction. With Nora, we have had the opportunity to do things differently from the start.
{Morgan and I were so wrong here. We ended up using the floor bed from birth with our third, fourth, and fifth babies and LOVED it. We would never go back to a crib. Also a note that I said we were using a floor bed for play, we weren't. What I had created was a Montessori movement area for Nora. Read here to see the differences between a Montessori floor bed and a movement area.}
{This still holds true! And is one of the easiest, cheapest and most effective things you can do with your newborn.}
{I am much more of a purist now but not completely. Again as we have incorporated more RIE - a similar caregiving pedagogy created by Magda Gerber - we have favored natural gross motor development instead of any container. We haven't used baby containers of any kind for our third, fourth, and fifth babies. This has worked well for our family and I think is very possible for most.}
- Floor Mat!
- High contrast mobile -- by far Nora's favorite so far (but more on the mobiles we are using soon!)
- Black and white images. I actually wish we had a few more of these around the house.
- A low hanging mirror -- this has provide a LOT of concentration from Nora.