Thursday, October 25, 2012

Montessori Without A Schoolroom

I have had moms-especially in person-say to me, "I'd love to use the Montessori Method in my home, but we don't have a school room."  "I like what you do at your house, but I couldn't do it at mine because we don't have the space."

I will say that it has been very nice to have a school room to set up our prepared environment.  BUT, that has all changed!!

Two weeks ago, our basement FLOODED!  It has had water in it before, but we added some window well covers, diverted some of the water, and purposely placed items where we knew they wouldn't get wet.  Well, so much for what we knew!

After hours of bailing water that was-literally-pouring into the basement, we discovered that the opposite end of the basement was slowly taking in water that was coming UP the drain!!  At that point, we realized that our efforts were futile.

I quickly started finding any bins I could from the store room (which meant I dumped all the clothing that had been in them) and started filling them up with our Montessori Materials.  We stacked all the bookshelves up on top of the tables to keep them from getting wet, and hoped for the best.

Thankfully, only the flooring was really ruined.  But, I no longer feel comfortable setting our school room back up down there.  And, our toy room took over our old school room, so I can't just put it back where it was.

So we are now 'Montessori' without a schoolroom.

And what does that look like???

Here are some views from the other day.

I have started placing works on our bookshelf, and hoping the kids will pick them up.  Charger really enjoyed our car three part cards.


Mini Cooper found our Marble Mind Game.


She also dressed herself :).



She asked to explore our timeline cards from Classical Conversations.  




And, Mustang has been really interested in online learning.  Here she is watching a YouTube video to help her learn her prepositions from Classical Conversations.  She did this for a straight hour!

Due to no classroom, we have had to do some more 'seat' type work at the table, but it is working out so far.  I'm just having to get used to creating a household environment that is always encouraging self directed learning.  I'm very interested in how this new journey will go!  I promise to keep updating as we adapt to our new learning situation.  

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So glad none of your materials were ruined! That is sad you lost that space though! I can't wait to see what you come up with your new situation!