I'm excited to announce that I have a free workshop coming up next week! Join us and learn respectful, connection-based tools for empowering children and ourselves.

Montessori creators from around the world have contributed to this bundle of over 100 educational resources. I've added my most popular bilingual continents printables. There is still time to get the bundle, and there is also the opportunity to donate more.

A place for everything and everything in its place. Like everything else, this can look a lot of different ways.

What this generally means is limiting the amount of activities or materials you have in your environment so that every activity has its own home. It provides structure, reliability, and promotes independence when the child knows where they can find an activity and where it can be returned when finished.

Everyone's rhythms and routines are going to look a little different, as they should.

Routines are not a tight schedule to adhere to, but rather repeated patterns that are predictable and reliable, and work together to form a greater rhythm.

Have you ever felt frustrated that a child isn't listening to you? What does that really mean?

When it comes to preparing the environment, the aim is to create a beautiful, minimal space so the focus is on the child and the materials. This can look a lot of different ways, as it should, and it will vary according to the needs of your child and your family, the realities of home life, and how you use your space.

To me, autumn has always meant rainy weather, colder weather, leaves changing colors, leaves falling, different foods appearing, and shorter days and longer nights. I’ve gathered up some of my favorite autumn activities and materials from those North Carolina days.

In these early years, impressions do not merely enter the child’s mind, actually they form it. What the child absorbs now is a part of who they will ultimately become.

I'm a big advocate for this one.

While we do want to provide opportunities for children to be busy and engaged, they also need the option to do nothing. Kids need a little quiet space where there is no expectation for a particular activity.

Have you ever been surprised or in awe of your child's sudden ability to do something new? Understanding sensitive periods is a major part of supporting a child's development, and gives us a lot of information about why they do what they do.

Spills happen, and spills are good! Hear me out.

Language development is a vast and dynamic process. These materials and activities provide rich language experiences for children in 3-6 Montessori environments.

Let's break down one of those Montessori terms: Planes of Development. This is the foundation of Montessori education and informs so much of how we are with children and the environments we prepare for them.

The materials in this area are the definition of concrete, hands-on learning or as Dr. Montessori called them, 'systems of materialized abstraction.' Let's start with one of the early Math materials, the Number Rods.

If you've seen pictures of Montessori classrooms or home environments, you may have noticed that Montessorians are quite fond of trays and baskets. These organize and define activities for the child, which makes them more appealing, and ultimately, easier to put away.

This is one of the most common questions I get from parents. Supporting beginning reading and writing skills can feel huge and expansive, but you are likely already doing more than you realize.

"I bet we could put water outside and it would freeze in just one minute."

One January afternoon my kindergarteners were talking about a recent cold snap and this comment came up. Of course we had to try it out.