Our Daily Rhythm in our Montessori Home

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Over the last several months I feel like our home finally settled into a good rhythm. My son dropped his nap nearly half a year ago so that took some adjustments. While that has made my days a bit more exhausting, we’ve found a rhythm recently that works really well for our family. In our home we don’t have a schedule. My baby sleeps when she’s tired, events vary in their times, but we do have a rhythm. This means we have a pretty predictable order of what happens each day. Here is a look at the rhythm in our Montessori home! At this point my son just turned 3 and my daughter recently turned 1.

I wake up at 4:30 or 5:00 am depending when we got to sleep the night before. This is my work time. I write blog posts, make Instagram reels, respond to DMs, do all sorts of work for my business. I also prep materials for teaching Y during the day. During this time my husband stays with our baby so she sleeps through the morning. The kids vary in when they wake up but I would say 6:30-7:00 is the most common. My husband sleeps until they are up.

Once my kids wake up I nurse M and my husband helps Y get ready for the day. He then begins making breakfast with them while I work out and shower. My toddler is very involved in things like cutting up fruit, pouring, mixing, etc. and my baby is starting to get more involved. I finish up getting myself ready, we finish getting breakfast ready, and we eat breakfast together. After breakfast, we get the kids cleaned up, dressed, and ready for the day. It is generally around 9:00 am which is when my husband starts work.

We start our homeschool day with morning basket. We say prayers, read a nature poem, go through the alphabet with our kinesthetic cues, sing songs, do a bit of language work, and read a few books. M joins us for this part and then goes to sleep with my husband when she is getting a bit tired. My husband puts her in the carrier and goes to work with her. This is a major privilege of work from home and allows me to have one-on-one time with my son while still giving my baby the contact naps she thrives with.

We then move on to shelf work. If he has a lot of energy and is struggling with not moving enough we switch to an obstacle course. Often he does a bit of shelfwork (things like puzzles, etc.) and then we do an obstacle course. We also do art sometimes, particularly watercolor.

Often during this time we do practical life as well. Often there is at least one cooking task I need to get done and Y joins me for that. He also will help clean windows and other practical life tasks like that. These are part of our work cycle and something we enjoy doing together. On this day I was photographing, for example, we cleaned the bathroom together.

When M wakes up from her nap we generally play a bit more, read some books, and begin heating up lunch. Lunch is usually leftovers, but it depends on what we have in the fridge. My husband comes down for lunch if he doesn’t have any meetings.

After lunch, we usually take a walk. Ideally, my son rides in the stroller and my daughter in the carrier which allows me to get some movement in! This depends a bit on timing and if my daughter woke up earlier in the morning from her nap we might do this walk before lunch.

When we get back from the walk we go back to open-ended playing and reading. Often my son chooses shelfwork again in the afternoon but he also plays with Magnatiles, blocks, and toys like that. Often we play a boardgame or two. We also might cook something or do some housework. M takes a second nap in the carrier at some point during this time. I wait for tired signals and pop her in when she’s tired.

We often take a snack break and have babycinno (foamed milk with some spices) and read some more books.

Around 4pm we switch to making dinner. My ideal is to finish making dinner by 5pm. Ideally food is either in the oven, finishing cooking, or just waiting by then. In theory 4-5pm should give me enough time to cook with the kids and get the food done. I involve both kids in the cooking as much as I can. Usually, Y likes to stay with me though sometimes (rarely) he goes off to play. My daughter also usually stays in her learning tower to mostly watch or goes and empties cabinets.

My husband gets off work around 5 pm and generally takes the kids for the next half hour. During this time he speaks with the kids in Hebrew, plays, and does anything that needs to be done to make dinner edible when I get down (such as putting soup back on the stove to heat up). This gives me a half hour to decompress, catch up on messages, and take care of emails since I am running my business in the margins of my time. At 5:30 I come down for dinner. To be honest, though that is the “perfect” schedule and the reality is often that I tidy the kitchen or finish cooking and M crawls in to join me.

We all eat dinner as a family around 5:30. After dinner my husband takes the kids up for bath time while I clean the kitchen. When they’re done in the bath, I come up. We put them in pajamas, I help them brush their teeth, and get ready for bed. I nurse M while my husband and Y get his room set up for bed. My husband and I then swing Y into bed in a blanket swing. I wrap him up and make him into an “enchilada” (a fun game we play). I then talk about the day with him, read a few books, play a couple of word games, and we do prayers. I then turn on his Toniebox with sleep music.

I go to shower so I can lie in bed with Y and my husband takes M downstairs in the carrier. Once I’m out of the shower I do journals then lie with Y if he is still awake. Since we dropped his nap he has been falling asleep easily on his own. The time it takes has lengthened a bit post daylight savings but he still is usually asleep when I get out of the shower. I go downstairs and sometimes M has fallen asleep with my husband, sometimes I take her and nurse her down.

We used to always keep her with us until we went to sleep, though lately, we have been transferring her down to her floor bed.

That’s a look at our daily rhythm in our Montessori home.