Cover Image: The Montessori Home

The Montessori Home

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Member Reviews

I've been a follower of Ashley's Youtube channel for years and was thrilled to receive this beautiful book! There is a good bit of overlap between the videos and the contents of the book, but I didn't mind this as it helped reinforce basic principles of Montessori, while offering a new format. The book is bright and beautiful, filled with color photos of Yeh's beautiful family, and is organized very well, perfect for referencing as your child grows. There were tons of activities based on the age group of the child, and ideas for how to incorporate the Montessori style into every aspect of your child's life at home. It is far beyond the beautiful minimalist toys that are all over social media, and this is the perfect guide to help parents implement the techniques from any age.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

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This is a fantastic book on bringing Montessori into the home! There are many activities and concepts introduced through the book with an abundant array of pictures throughout. I really love how the author included photos of each activity for specific ages as well. The book really simplifies the method for any reader, especially those who are visual learners.

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This book was full of practical applications for how to incorporate Montessori principles into the home for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. I particularly loved that infants were included. I'll definitely be incorporating some of the ideas, while others weren't practical for my home or my lifestyle.

I particularly the section with images of educational Montessori style toys for each age range, as well as the idea with curating the number of choices for books and activities for your child and rotating the selection over time.

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The Montessori Home by Ashley Yeh is a beautiful book full of pictures and step-by-step instructions on creating a Montessori environment within your home.

I am an Early Childhood Montessori Teacher of ten years working with children 3-6 years of age. This book captures the heart of what I try to establish within my classroom daily and the methods we teach within our school, including infants and toddlers.

I appreciate how Ashley breaks it down in creating an environment and includes toys, lessons/materials for academic learning at a young age, activities to build connections, and recipes. Young children are sponges gathering information from the world around them through their senses, so creating this environment at school and bridging it to home supports child development.

Teaching independence when children are young sets them up for success as they grow older, as I've seen with my students who are now entering middle school. Children want to do as much as they can on their own, leading them to build sequencing and order. Creating a hands-on environment within their personal space is the best way to accomplish this. In my classroom, everything is at their size to meet my student's needs, and having areas within your home, will also meet these developmental milestones within the child's sensitive periods.

I appreciate the knowledge surrounding the Montessori Methods to mainstream society so we can capture the heart and spirit within each child, the way Dr. Maria Montessori had hoped and worked so hard for. I thank Ashley for sharing her own experiences, and I know it'll connect to others, building a community for the next generation.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the early e-arc in exchange for an honest review. I'll definitely recommend this to my family and my students' parents.

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If this book had existed before my daughter was born I wouldn't have had to read 8-10 others plus follow countless Instagram and YouTube accounts to distill down to this exact information! It's a practical, flexible, basic but thorough guide to using Maria Montessori's methods at home. You're not trying to make your home into a classroom; it's your home, and your own children. There's so much love, joy, and respect for children and families here, just like in Ashley's wonderful YouTube channel. She's not telling you to buy a bunch of specific toys or materials, just explaining the principles and offering many ideas for fulfilling those goals. If you're even a little bit curious about Montessori methods for your young children (beginning from infancy) I highly recommend this book. Follow the child :)

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I’m a Montessori educator and enjoyed reading this book. Principles of Montessori education are presented clearly but I did find the amount of information at times a bit overwhelming and dry, and wonder if it would be a lot for parents who are new to Montessori to follow and not feel overwhelmed.

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This book has an introduction, details about the 3 basic elements to the Montessori foundation: the prepared adult, environment and the child.

Followed is a break down of each room and suggestions for infants, toddler and preschoolers. I found this approach very interesting since often we limit children's space to their playroom and bedroom. This book offers insight into how to incorporate Montessori ideals into your home, with tips and tricks, suggested activities and furniture or things you can incorporate.

Each chapter includes the suggestions along with the why's? So that you can fully understand the reasoning behind implementing these suggestions.

At the end there is an index and resource guide with tons of suggestions on where to purchase the items mentioned as well as recommended reading resources for diving further into the Montessori world.

Definitely very interesting with many great ideas, I will be coming back to this book over the course of my child's life.

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Hmmm.... This book made me surprisingly sad. I am very familiar with the Montessori method. My mother sent me to a Montessori school when I was young and she definitely prescribed to the method. I was always treated like a tiny adult and she made everything about my life designed to build the best brain. I also incorporated a lot of Montessori principles and activities in my children's homeschooling (along with principles of many other philosophies) and have read many books on Montessori's teachings.

Another mom told me years ago that they say that "Montessori schools are all work and no play, and that Waldorf schools are all play and no work." That's a generalization and an unfair one at that, but there is some truth to it. This book really teaches you how to treat your child like a tiny adult from infancy. It recommends a floor bed for your infant -- a mattress on the floor -- so your baby can be self sufficient literally from a few months old or even birth. If they roll off the mattress that's fine because they can just fall back asleep on the floor. Obviously this makes a whole lot of assumptions about your living space, finances and parenting style. Likewise, you're supposed to buy a tiny table for your baby to sit at from 6 months old so he or she can learn to sit like a person from the start, complete with tiny metal silverware and a tiny glass.

I get it, I know the reasoning behind all of this, and I did incorporate some of this stuff with my own kids (they too used jelly jars for glasses, for instance, and I taught them the coat flip so they could put on their own coats). But oh my goodness, this is just so dry and sad and does remind me so much of my own sad, practical, brain-building childhood (though my childhood was mostly sad for much more serious reasons).

Don't let them have pretend play before age 6 because they don't understand fantasy well enough. Don't have many toys, and no electronic ones. No pretend play, no unicorns, no Disney. Have mostly practical, real-world objects for them to use for "play." Be firm but kind about everything. Standards and rules everywhere. Teach the proper way to do everything. Firm but kind, firm but kind, firm but kind. No playing, missy. Sigh.

There's great stuff in here. The section on "toys" is good (educational materials really, each designed to instruct and help with some developmental need). We had a lot of those. There's great advice if you like minimalist homes. It's interesting learning about Montessori principles regarding infancy. Shrug. But I would also suggest checking out books on Waldorf, Charlotte Mason, unschooling, attachment parenting, Reggio, and play-based learning. Take the best of all of them and use what works best in your home and follows the needs of your child. This is a great book to teach you some of Montessori's principles for that.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

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