Montessori Style Rooms

I am a big fan of alternative education styles and there are a lot of good things to be said for the Montessori method. We plan to Unschool our children (more on that later) but I think there are a lot of ideas that we can take from other educational philosophies including Montessori. What I love about Montessori is that children are respected, given independence and allowed to use real tools and materials rather than fake, "kid" versions of things. Montessori is also child led, following the individual  child's interests and abilities. In this way it is very similar to Unscholling.  What I don't like about Montessori is that unrealistic imaginary play is discouraged. For example, you can play prentend at being an airplane pilot but not at being a fairy.


Anyway, enough of educational theory for the moment. I have been thinking a lot about how I want Echo's room to take shape when she gets older and we move her out of the nursery and in to her "big girl" room. I'm really interested in the Montessori style or organizing a room. Here are some great examples from my Pinterest board on kids rooms.

 Some of the things to take not of in a Montessori style room are beds directly on the floor, shelves and pictures that are low to the ground, within easy reach and toys organized in to easily accessed containers so that kids will have no trouble getting toys out and putting them away without adult help.

Other Montessori principles include limiting number of toys and choosing simple, quality toys over lots of cheap plastic toys. I love the idea of all this and would like to try it for our kids rooms but I feel like it might be harder in practice than in theory. Also, depending on the number of kids we end up having it could be difficult to have floor beds like I want, we may end up needing bunk beds!

Still I think all of this is is good information to keep in mind as my baby is quickly turning in to a little girl. She will be needing her big girl room before we know it!