Our Venture into Montessori Homeschooling

I'll admit I'm a little nervous to say we're going to home school for the early years of Sofia's education. It's probably because I'm a perfectionist and I'm worried people will judge me. Whenever we tell people this we always have to go into a long explanation of why. My main reason is bilingualism. I want to make sure Sofia learns to speak read and write in Italian.  I can already see English winning the game every time we have my mom in town or we go to friends houses. So I have to work extra hard to keep the Italian she has already learned. I figure if two college graduates can't teach their kid to read write and do simple math then it's all for naught. I know your going to ask about socialization everyone does. Right now we go to playdates on Thursday to story-time on Tuesdays and to the park on Wednesday. When she's older and can enroll in fun classes, we'll do that too. This post is not about that right now though. Let's get to the fun Montessori part!

We've decided to going with a Montessori style of homeschooling. It's a child lead practical life skills method. This means we've implemented a lot of changes around the house to accommodate Sofia's need to do it herself. We also do practical life skill activities daily as well as reading, drawing, crafts, gardening, taking nature walks and singing and whole lot of songs.

Here are some of the changes we've made around the house:

light switch extenders

step stool for bathroom sink

pull out shelf for her cups, plates, bowls and silverware

lowered closet bar so she can hang her own clothing

normal chair with extra tall legs so she can sit at the table like we do

small pitcher so she can pour her own water

And last but not least the one that freaks people out the most is the small kitchen knife. I have her practice cutting soft things like bananas and mushrooms.  There are a lot of knives in my house because I cook so much. I want her to learn to be responsible with a knife even at this young of an age then I can worry a little less when she decides to make me breakfast in bed one day.

As for the more formal activities we've just started doing those. We have water exploration kit, a letter board for learning the shapes and order of the letters of the alphabet and I'm working on creating this learning board.

Sofia has spent a lot of time playing with the chain lock and zipper. I want to add a part with buttons to button and laces to lace. Oh yes and a Velcro part as well because who doesn't love to rip open Velcro.

There is something really fascinating about toddlers and water.  Normally Sofia can only do an activity for about 5 minutes or less. But with this she play for over half an hour. I think I will make it something we do several times a week.

I can't wait for her to become interested in specific topics so we can start to explore them in depth.
For now I'm still rounding up materials.  Next time I'll talk about the ways home schoolers can meet people and the dreaded socialization question.