You’ve decided you want to live a Montessori inspired life at home, awesome!
So do we! And I would love to show you what our real life Montessori inspired baby room’s looked like to give you some inspiration that isn’t filled with fancy furniture and looks like it could be on the cover of a magazine.
First things first, I emphasize Montessori inspired for baby room because guess what….Maria Montessori did not actually raise her own son as an infant.
This is a shocking fact that I don’t believe many Montessori parents know.
She did not actually have a place where she worked with infants, but instead started with toddler years.
SO, with that in mind we took a very real life approach using her philosophy and incorporated modern research for our home life with a baby.
What We Included in Montessori Baby Room:
- Floor Mirror
- Mobile
- Basket of Toys
- Baby Sized Couch
These are the main things we included in each of our children’s baby room’s when they were an infant.
We kept it simple and within our budget.
It provided them the ability to move freely, explore different materials in exploration basket as they aged, and they could watch themselves and people/pets behind them.
These are really the main components to having a Montessori inspired baby room, the ability to move freely and explore their world.
A floor mirror was a really a favorite by all the children, you just need to make sure you source a safe baby mirror option.
(This post may contain affiliate links where I earn a small commission from your purchase at no cost to you. Feel free to check my disclosure for more info! )
At one point our two eldest children shared a room (infant slept in our room like mentioned before), so there were materials for both of them.
Mobile
When our second came along we gave a try at making a DIY Munari mobile, as buying one was out of budget for us.
As you can see below our older toddler enjoyed being underneath with his little brother.
Use what you can already have, then if it suits your needs look into buying extra materials is my advice.
With our first we just used a Skip-Hop playmat with overhead toys as it was handed down and had a nature theme which I could handle as it was not too stimulating.
Exploration Baskets
We made our own exploratory baskets with items of different textures when they were young infants from a mixture of gifts from friends and few bought items.
For Montessori aligned books I sourced a lot of DK Board Books that had real pictures in them.
Older siblings are always a source of interest for young baby siblings once they can focus and watch.
Just keep an eye on them in case any materials are too risky for the baby to have in hand.
Baby Sized Couch
As each of our children become crawling aged babies and more mobile we would then introduce a child sized couch to their baby room.
These are afforadable and suit our needs when they want a comfy place to sit and look through one of their Montessori aligned books.
Our kids get these couches as a first Christmas gift from a certain family member, so that is the only reason they each got different ones over time. Otherwise it would’ve have been a passed along item.
With our third baby who came a few years later I had passed along quite a few materials to a friend, so I needed to source certain early infancy toys again.
If you are on your first and want quality baby toys that will last the test of time and be easy to keep for future siblings I can suggest the Lovevery Charmer Play Kit.
Less = More, from one parent to another.
This whole kit can pretty much covers most of your baby year and is Montessori aligned. I can attest these toys are safer than some of the amazon and ebay options out there right now for toys aimed at babies.
Read the reviews on Amazon. It’s not work the choking risk some of the cheap online rattles.
So if you want to buy 1 thing to cover most of your bases then I can recommend the Charmer Kit on its own will cover it.
Wish it would have been available where I lived when I had my first, but at that time it was not an option. Oh well, at least I get to try it with my third kiddo lol.
If you want to see the Charmer kit up close I took photos and showed it in this article. No affiliate links, all just info.
Trying to just offer a simple solution to any new parents want and easy solution.
No Floor Bed?
You will notice I did not put a floor bed in like many in the Montessori community would.
As someone who studied a science degree in University I like to have a bit of research behind me when making decisions for my children.
This exactly how I stumbled upon Montessori, but I also took on board recent research on safe sleep, as a lot has been learned in the decades since Maria Montessori was around in person.
I was comfortable with my choice in a cot and knowing my child was in a safe location when I left them to sleep and did other house chores. Especially when they start rolling.
The cot was in our room for the first half of their baby year anyways, so it was not in the baby’s room til later on.
As above around the 10month mark with my second they shared the room like this for a short while.
If you really are into the floor bed idea I have collected a group of real life floor bed examples if you would like to look.
Diaper Changes?
We used cloth diapers, this system moved around our home depending on what worked at the time and become standing diaper changes eventually.
If you want to know more I have written all about what worked for us and my 4 basket system.
My Advice
Use what you have, then collect a handful (literally 5 – 8) of toys, a baby mirror is pretty good idea, and if you really need get any extras from there.
You do NOT have to buy all the Instagram expensive furniture to do Montessori at home.
If you really want to know more ideas for Montessori baby life at home I can recommend the Montessori Baby Book by Simone Davies. You can’t go wrong having it on hand as a new parent.
