Two weeks is not a particularly long amount of time, I acknowledge that. However, I feel we have settled in a bit in the past two weeks and I want to record some of my reflections on this time. The first weeks with a newborn are intense and I know the details of these days will someday be forgotten. I will transition, I hope, someday to three and then more than that, but the transition to two is unique in many ways.

We spent a full month traveling from 19.5-20.5 months so this month is a combined shelf post from the past two months! Come see our Montessori shelf at 19 and 20 months.

The second pregnancy flew by and here we are at the end preparing my son to welcome his little sister in a few weeks. This will be a BIG change for him; frankly, parts of it make me nervous. A lot also makes me excited: he loves babies and I think he will be a wonderful big brother. Here is what we are doing to prepare him for this huge change.

A look at our Montessori shelf at 18-months-old, I share what my son has been playing with this past month and some developmental toy recommendations for around this age.

Montessori is not about the “stuff” but since many of us are looking for gifts for our little ones this holiday season I am sharing what we love and what we are getting our son for Chanukah.

I want to preface by saying our Montessori shelf was not the focus of the month at all. My son is far more interested in practical life activities so that is where we spend most of our time. I went through several iterations to get to this shelf at the end of the month. I should have taken photos during the process but I didn’t. Suffice to say this shelf included a lot of trial and error after multiple materials went completely untouched.

Somewhere around the second year of their child’s life the words “potty training” start to enter the thoughts of parents, often with a sense of imminent dread. The Montessori approach to toilet learning, however, is quite different than traditional potty training. It is not a process you do in a weekend or even a week.

This month there has been intense interest in the shelf and in mastering some materials that have been out for a while. The multi-piece puzzle, for example, has been mastered this month and while still interesting to him will likely be rotated out for a more challenging one soon. I find there is still interest in toys that have been on the shelf for a while.

How do you get him to clean up after playing with things? How do you keep him from just taking out everything? I get asked this all the time so I thought I’d share a few of my tips. This is a question I see asked about Montessori environments a lot in general. In Montessori classrooms children generally return their materials to a shelf after using with them. We do the same at home, though of course it is far more flexible at home.

Our Montessori shelf and activities at 15 months old. We have been loving shelfwork this month and have seen a huge increase in fine motor skills. Come check out what we have been playing with this month!

Our minimalist packing list for a 12 day airplane trip with our toddler at 15 months old.

Recently on Instagram I shared about the importance of routine for toddlers. The next day I shared that we do not have a schedule but instead follow a daily “rhythm” in our Montessori home. This raised some questions: what does it mean to have routines without a schedule? This post should shed some light on how I see these all fitting together.

When I first signed up for Wanderlust Family Retreats it felt like it was an alternate reality where I would be attending. A mother-child retreat? The most gorgeous location? THOSE CABINS? All of this after nearly two years of COVID isolation. It felt unreal.

The experience itself was magical.

One thing you might notice about our shelf this month if you also read my blog post from 13 months is very little has changed.. We have been very interested in practical life and in being outdoors. All in all, we didn’t do a ton of shelfwork and that reflects in our shelf looking basically the same.

Our favorite Montessori and Montessori-inspired activities at 3-6 months old. Activities remain incredibly simple during this age as your little one really is still just discovering their world.

Our Montessori shelves at 13 months. This month we are loving posting activities and our ball run. We are also working on shape sorters and bigger puzzles.

Here is a variety of floor bed options including ones with bars/sides, ones without, and cribs that convert into floor beds easily. I also discuss some considerations when deciding which floor bed to get.

We have been loving puzzles around here lately. Now that I have introduced all of our Montessori single-piece puzzles and we are moving on to multiple pieces I thought I would do a post on how we introduced them. As with all materials in Montessori we started with it in its simplest form.

Our Montessori shelf at 12 months old! This month we are doing more complicated object permanence boxes, ring stackers, and a lot of one-piece puzzles.

For this segment of Ask the Expert I speak with Caley of Learn with Chatterboxes about how to encourage communication from birth as well as at the stage Yitzchak is now.

Caley is a speech-language pathologist. She has a Bachelors in Early Childhood Education and a Masters in speech-language pathology.