Our Montessori Shelf at 19 and 20 Months
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I usually share these monthly but this time it is a combined post for the past two months. We were traveling for a whole month from 19.5 to 20.5 months. While we did have a makeshift shelf with a few toys while traveling we spent very little time playing with it. It was so interesting seeing him come back to materials after being gone for a month. With many of them, he mastered them pretty immediately after returning despite not being quite there when leaving.
Matching has been a real favorite this month both on the shelf and in real life. For example, we use our visual shopping list to match things in the store. We also used the fruits from it for matching while on our trip. This allowed some shelf work with very little to bring.
Our Bedroom Montessori Shelf
Of course, the shelf did change a bit over the course of 2 months so I am going to go over what is pictured above first and then share a few other things that have been loved on the shelf this month.
On the top left of his bedroom shelf, we have my son’s beading activity. This is a recent addition after he mastered the one we got from our Lovevery box. This is considerably more challenging, however. He is working hard on it but definitely is a ways from mastering it. I would love to find something in between the difficulty of the Lovevery one and this one but have not been able to find at this point.
Next to that is an animal matching activity. As I mentioned, he is loving matching. He is also very interested in animals recently so this has been a favorite. Ours is from Lovevery but these can easily be done with other cards. My friend Autumn of More than Montessori made some lovely printable ones that can be paired with animal figurines (we like Schleich, but there are many cheaper options). I have also used our Skillmatics flash cards for matching (both animal matching and household item matching). He had a real development in his matching skills while we were traveling. Previously he could do some but when we returned he immediately matched all the animals. This is also a language activity for us as he loves learning the names and animal sounds.
Next to that is a 3D puzzle from Lovevery. We LOVE this puzzle. We are in general big Lovevery fans who have subscribed from birth but occasionally there is an item that really stands out in their boxes. This is one of them. There are two sizes of rods and just enough holes for them. This makes it an excellent self-correcting activity.
Next is a shape sorter we got from Tiny Earth Toys (code Homeandontheway10). This has been out for awhile and he has made a lot of progress on it. Shape sorting has been something he hasn’t always loved loved but comes back to it over and over.
The last one on the shelf is a Lovevery puzzle. This one has different shapes and the shapes fit together [similar here]. He has really enjoyed it (more than anticipated). In general, he hasn’t loved a lot of puzzles so I was happy to see how much he loved this one. I’ve found nesting puzzles seem to catch his interest more. This is one of a couple toys I brought on our trip. I hadn’t introduced it before the trip so it was a gamble I was glad was successful.
Now for toys not shown in the image on the top of this post.
My son continues to love his ball run. I rotate between it and the car run every few weeks since he loves both of them but we don’t have the room to have both out.
He is also into his pot people color matching [cannot find link, similar idea here]. I put these out prior to our trip and they were one of the other toys that came with us on the trip. We brought three colors: red, blue, and yellow. He loves putting the peg people into the pots and has learned color matching from them. We got them from Tiny Earth Toys as well, though I chose to purchase them at the end of our rental! Since I had only introduced three colors I want to introduce more and they would even be great for a younger baby for posting practice.
I also introduced a more challenging threading activity. He mastered his Lovevery threading activity a bit ago and I purchased this one to give him more of a challenge. It was definitely far more challenging and it will likely take some time before he fully masters it! Finally, we had nesting/stacking boxes. These were also from Tiny Earth. He never really stacked them (though he does stack blocks) but he loved using them for nesting.
Our Living Room Montessori Shelf
This shelf always has a bit less of the “Montessori” things because I tend to focus on open-ended toys here. We got him unit blocks for Chanukah this year so they will be taking up the bottom shelf starting next month. He definitely isn’t super into open-ended toys at this point, but I have them available and am observing that interest. I tend to test different open-ended materials on this shelf to see what he is most drawn to.
He does really love his cars. They are mostly Moover [currently sold out] and he uses them with our Lily and River arch/rocker (code HOMEANDONTHEWAY). Next to them he has some trains we got from Tiny Earth Toys. He seems to prefer his cars at this point but I had them out to see what he thinks. Not on his shelf, but he is obsessed with this ride-on car currently that we managed to score secondhand.
He has some Lovevery blocks on this shelf too. He has recently gotten more into building towers with them which has been fun and has me excited about the introduction of unit blocks.
On the bottom shelf, he has this hammer toy he has loved for several months. Hammering has been a real favorite. This one also came from Tiny Earth but is from Plan Toys. We also have a woodpecker hammer toy we love.
Finally, he has this stacking material from Lovevery. I’m not exactly sure what to call it, but it has been a fun building activity!
